SwissBritNet

From 1610 to 1614, two Zurich citizens from well-to-do families, Johann Rudolf Hess (1588-1655) and Marcus Stapfer (1591-1619), undertook joint educational travels, during which they spent time in various parts of France, the Netherlands, Germany, and England. In late 1611 and 1612, they were in Oxford, where their names appear in a list of ‘Admissions to use the Bodleian Library’ and they met a traveller from Basel, Jakob Meyer (1590-1622), and in 1613, they are known to have been in London. Stapfer produced a travelogue, ‘Jtinerarium auß Deütschland durch Niderland, Engelland, und Franckreych in die Eydtgenossenschafft‘ (‘Itinerarium from Germany across the Low Countries, England, and France to the [Swiss] Confederation’), now at the Hamburg State and University Library. This account features a number of stopping-points in England, notably Dover, Canterbury, London, Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge. In the section devoted to London, Stapfer mentions the playhouses, 'die spilhüser', although, unlike his Swiss compatriot Thomas Platter from Basel a few years earlier (1599), he provides no specific information about them. That Hess and Stapfer frequented the playhouses is suggested, however, by the play quartos they purchased, which are still extant today and held at the ‘Zurich Central Library (Zentralbibliothek)’. Nine of Hess's quartos were preserved in a sammelband (now disbound) that included Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (3^rd edn, 1609) and Hamlet (3^rd edn, 1611), the pseudo-Shakespearean The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England (2^nd edn, 1611), attributed to 'W. Sh.' on the title page, Ben Jonson's Volpone (1^st edn, 1607), John Marston, The Insatiate Countess (1^st edn, 1613), and the anonymous How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad (1^st edn, 1608). Stapfer owned a copy of the third edition of Shakespeare Pericles (1611), which bears his name on the title page ('Pro Marco Stapfero Ft.'), as does the title page of a copy of the third edition of Hamlet (1611) in Yale University's Elizabethan Club ('for Marc Stapfer'). Thanks to the two gentlemen of Zurich, Johann Rudolph Hess and Marcus Stapfer, Shakespeare appears to have had a bibliographic presence in Switzerland since his own lifetime.

Lukas Erne

See Lukas Erne. "The Two Gentlemen of Zurich: Marcus Stapfer and Johann Rudolph Hess, Swiss Travellers to England (1611–13), and Their Shakespeare Quartos." The Library 24 (2023): 51-67. https://doi.org/10.1093/library/fpad003