A Shakespearean play from 1634, found fortuitously in Salamanca

Edition of 1634 of Shakespeare's play 'The two noble knights', the oldest in Spain.

Shakespeare's first play arriving in Spain JOHN STONE / REAL COLEGIO DE LOS ESCOCESES / Europa Press

Nothing indicated that in the section of books of the XVIII century of thought and criticism of the Royal College of Scots at the University of Salamanca there was the oldest edition of a Shakespeare play of all there are in Spain.

But that's how it was, as John Stone, a professor at the University of Barcelona, ​​has found.

He was researching the critical reception and impact that

Scottish economist Adam Smith's

essay

had on his contemporaries

when he came across a volume whose binding was different from the rest.

The professor, whose doctoral thesis explored in some of its chapters the critical reception of Shakespeare in enlightened Europe, immediately identified that this strange volume was from a century earlier;

but there was no title, no brand.

Opening it, he found a collection of 20 17th century theater pieces written in English.

That happened in December 2019, and just a few months later, the academic Stone reported in

, - a publication of Oxford University Press, where researchers announce this type of discoveries - his fortuitous meeting of

, the last work of William Shakespeare, a tragicomedy he wrote in collaboration with John Fletcher.

"It is not a very well known work but its fame is increasing," explains Stone.

The play included in the volume discovered by Stone was printed in 1634. “This discovery redounds to something we already knew and is the important role played by the diaspora of Catholics from England in spreading Shakespeare.

There are some of his works printed in this same period in volumes that are in the north of France, and there was another in a collection in Valladolid that is now in the United States ”, Stone, who has been diving in the funds since 2015, points out in a telephone conversation from the historic library of the Scots, one of the oldest with books in English in Spain.

As the professor explains in his article, "an anthology of texts in English in the 17th century in Spain was a rarity and even more so one of theatrical works" like the one found in Salamanca.

The collective catalog of the Spanish bibliographic heritage of editions prior to 1900 does not contain any theatrical work in English printed before 1720, as the researcher points out, since the library of the Galician diplomat Diego Sarmiento de Acuña who was at the court of Jaime I of England , "According to the inventory of 1623 it contained poetry, but no theater."

The volume now discovered, where Shakespeare's work is, includes 19 other plays, and the truth is that the Bard of Avon seems that the printer did not give special importance.

What's more, there are several works by other authors, unknown today, and only one by Shakespeare.

But the discovery, says Stone, is relevant because it shows that a community of English speakers had very free access to culture in Madrid.

“And this also opens up new avenues of investigation to delve deeper and ask who came to read this Shakespeare play, or what influence it could have had.

Lope de Vega, for example, knew the rector and was admitted to the same building where the library was located a few days before his death, "he says, before adding that very few knew English or could read it in Spain in the seventeenth century.

Originally the Royal College of Scots, an institution founded in 1627, it was located in the capital, before its transfer to Valladolid - after being briefly closed with the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 - and finally installed, several centuries later, in Salamanca in 1985. Little is known about how its library was formed among whose founders was the Catholic officer William Semple who served Philip II since 1570. His nephew, Hugh Semple, was rector of the institution, escaped the control of the Holy Office and "He asked priests and students to bring him volumes and there are books by a Scottish diplomat who was in Madrid in 1639. The volumes arrived by ship and by land," explains Stone.

The digital cataloging of its holdings has been going on for two or three years and continues, so hopefully there will be new discoveries.