In planning the Limited Editions Club Shakespeare the first consideration was of the type, which needed to be bold and vigorous enough to convey to the reader’s eye something of the rugged Elizabethan quality of the text. A large format was necessary to allow for the illustrations and therefore a correspondingly large type was indicated. The first experiments were made at
the Oxford University Press with great-primer Fell types; but when for various reasons it became necessary to print the volumes on this side of the Atlantic, the use of Fell types had to be abandoned and search made for something else comparable in effect.

For so extensive an undertaking hand-setting in this country was out of the question. After experiments with several of the type faces made by the machine companies it was felt that one of them was a suitable as the reproduction of a type cut by a Hollander, Anton Janson, between 1660 and 1687 – less than a hundred years after Shakespeare’s time.

The Lanston Monotype Machine Company undertook to cut the 18-point size in close facsimile of the original, preserving all the slight irregularities of design and alignment which help to give it life and vigor.

Paper was the next consideration. As nearly eighty tons would be required for the fifty-nine thousand volumes comprised in the whole edition, hand-made paper was quite out of the question. The problem was to produce a suitable paper with a rag content within the limit of price. Experiments were made with trial runs on specially made rolls until a sheet was produced which, within the limitations, has all the qualities desired – durability, lightness, opacity, and mellowness of tone without being definitely ‘antique.’

The volumes are bound with gilt tops and uncut edges in backs of American linen, on which the titles of the various Plays are stamped in gold. The boards are covered with paper expecially produced for this edition, printed with a pattern in four colors that is peculiarly appropriate to this purpose. It may be of interest to recount the derivation of this design.

Twelve years ago a remarkable discovery was made at Oxford. The premises at No. 3, Cornmarket Street, were in occupation of John Davenant, a vintner, from about 1592 to 1614. Shakespeare was a close friend of Davenant’s and stood godfather to his son, William …

One of the rooms in the existing house was beautifully decorated in color and partly paneled, but all this interesting work, dating from about 1550, had been long lost sight of, and was not rediscovered until 1930 when some minor alterations were in contemplation. When some canvas and about a dozen layers of wallpaper were stripped from the walls, an interesting painted decoration was revealed in all its original brilliancy.

A drawing was made from photographs of this wall, and sent to Oxford to be colored on the spot by a careful artist. The working drawings for four colors were then made, zinc plates produced from these and printed in the same tints as the original. The title, ‘The Plays of W. Shakespeare,’ was substituted in a panel at the top, in lettering modeled on that of the pious exhortations painted within similar panels as a frieze in the room that the Poet himself possibly mah have occupied in his friend’s house.