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ABSTRACT
Accounts of Shakespeare's reevaluation during the eighteenth century often mention the role of the publishing war between Jacob Tonson the younger and Robert Walker (1734-35) that flooded the market with inexpensive copies of his plays. Walker lacked the legal standing to sue his rival over the plays' copyrights, and the normally litigious Tonson declined to pursue his claim to Shakespeare in the courts; instead, the two men tried the case in the pages of their books and the popular press. In this essay, Robert Hamm Jr. examines the rhetoric of their advertising war. Their arguments over rightful ownership reveal how the new copyright regulation enacted by the Statute of Anne continued to compete with an older system determined by correctness and custom.
KEYWORDS: eighteenth-century editions of Shakespeare; publishing and piracy; copyright law; William Chetwood; William Feales
"WALKER V. TONSON" IS NOT, IN FACT, the name of a law case, and that is the point of this essay. In the fall of 1734, Robert Walker, a producer of cheap - and sometimes controversial - publications, began to issue Shakespeare's plays in inexpensive, single-play editions, an unmistakable challenge to the Tonson publishing house's longstanding claim to own the right to print the plays.1 As Walker lacked legal standing to contest his competitor s copyrights to the plays, he did not challenge Jacob Tonson the younger (1682-1735) in the courts.2 Instead, he presented his case for the right to publish the plays directly to print consumers through a series of advertisements and notices included in the pages of his books. Walker characterized his powerful adversary as a monopolist who possessed no legitimate claim to Shakespeare's plays and was using his wealth and professional connections to stifle fair competition. Tonson refuted these charges in the pages of his editions of the plays and condemned Walker's "vile Practice," characterizing it as piracy, dangerous to consumers and to the bookselling trade.3 Tonson and his associates also used the London newspapers to wage a broader publicity campaign in which they denounced Walker and his allegedly illegal business practices in a series of printed announcements. Through these advertisements and notices, the publishers presented arguments, counter-arguments, evidence, and even depositions; each tried to establish the legality and accuracy of his own publications...