Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar-school: and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used; and, contrary to the king, his crown, and dignity, thou hast built a paper mill.
2 Henry VI, iv, 7.
The early-invented fable of Faustus, and the assistance given him by the Devil in the multiplication of the first printed bibles (certainly a most short-sighted step on the part of his Satanic Majesty) had got fixed in the minds of the populace, and created among the ignorant a prejudice against the Printing-press, and it was to this feeling Jack Cade appealed. All our Chroniclers place the erection of a Printing-press in England some years too early, but no one except Shakspere has put the date so far back as 1450, the date of Jack Cade’s insurrection: it is simply a blunder; but it was the Printing-press and its introduction to this country that was in the Author’s brain, and the exact date of that event was unknown, being probably as difficult to arrive at then as it is now.[1]
We have already noticed in how simple a manner originated that grand discovery which, instead of one perishable manuscript, produced numberless printed books, and thus enabled mankind to perpetuate for ever the knowledge they had gained. The real superiority of the Press over the pen was the easy multiplication of copies, and this was the idea in the Poet’s brain when he wrote:
She carved thee for her seal and meant thereby
Thou shouldst print more nor let that copy die.
Sonnet xi.
Type-founding has in these days arrived at such perfection, that most of the blemishes and faults common in Shakspere’s time are now unknown. Under the old system of hand moulds a type founder was sure when commencing work to cast a certain number of imperfect letters, because until the mould by use got warmed, the liquid metal solidified too soon, and the body or shank of the type was shrunk, and became no inappropriate emblem of an old man’s limbs whose hose would be
A world too wide for his shrunk shank.
As You Like It, ii, 7.
The names of the various sizes of type in the sixteenth century were few compared with our modern list; Canon, Great Primer, Pica, Long Primer, and Brevier almost complete the catalogue; and however familiar Shakspere may have been with their names, it is difficult to imagine any scene in which these technical names could be introduced with propriety. Yet, of one, Nonpareil, a new small type first introduced from Holland about 1650, and which for its beauty and excellence was much admired, Shakspere seems to have conceived a most favorable idea. Prospero, praising his daughter, calls her ‘a Nonpareil’ (Tempest, Act iii, Sc. 2); Olivia is the ‘Nonpareil of beauty’ (Twelfth Night, Act i, Scene 5); and Posthumus speaks of Imogen as the ‘Nonpareil of her time’ (Cymbeline, Act ii, Scene 5).
The exactitude and precision of everything connected with the arrangement of printing from types is curiously hinted at by Touchstone, when describing the preciseness of the Courtiers’ quarrels:
We quarrel in print by the book.
As You Like It, v, 4;