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2 unusual facts about Nicholas Ling


Nicholas Ling

In 1607 he transferred 16 copyrights to John Smethwick, among them three Shakespeare plays (Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Love's Labour's Lost) as well as The Taming of a Shrew.

This edition, printed by Valentine Simmes, has been widely condemned as a wildly inaccurate and badly printed travesty of the play.


To be, or not to be

The first edition of Hamlet in print, the 1603 "First Quarto" printed by Valentine Simmes for Nicholas Ling's bookshop, has a shorter and more direct version of the speech.


see also