The First Extant Edition

Marlowe, Christopher (1564-1593)

The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew [Ievv] of Malta.

London: Printed by I.B. for Nicholas Vavasour, and are to be sold at his Shop in the Inner Temple, neere the Church, 1633.

Price: $225,000.00

Quarto: 7 x 5 1/4 in. A-I4, K2 (lacking initial blank A1)

FIRST EXTANT EDITION.

Bound in modern full dark brown morocco circa 1984, in a custom box. A fine copy, lightly washed, unpressed, the paper preserving its rattle. All edges gilt. Provenance: Ximenes (sold 1993), with receipt and scan of a note from Steve Weissman regarding the sale.

"Although written about 1589 and entered in the Stationers' Registers in 1594, no earlier edition than the present is known. The fact that the 1594 entry (Arber II 650) entitles the play, 'The famous tragedie' seems to indicate some relation with the present for which Vavasour made an original entry in 1632. However, the text here printed has been edited and revised by Heywood at a date which does not admit of this being a reprint of a 1594 edition while the use of the world 'famous' in the title of this edition may be from the tradition of the play-bills, as was the case in Cooke's Greenes Tu Quoque, and not from the usage of an earlier printed title." (Pforzheimer)

“The first recorded performance of play took place at the Rose Theatre on 26 February 1592. “Whether Marlowe could have been present at the play's opening in February is uncertain, for a month earlier he had been arrested for 'coynage'—coining money—in Flushing, or Vlissingen, in the Netherlands, and deported back to England 'to be tryed'.”(DNB).

STC 17412; Greg II 475; Pforzheimer 642; ESTC S109853; http://estc.bl.uk/S109853; Arber IV 288; Huntington C.L. 275; Ashley Cat. III 116; W.A. White Cat. 86; Hoe Cat III (1903) 116; Wrenn Cat. III, 117; Clark Bibl. of T. Heywood, 144