Leass for making

[art]

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http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/july2001.html

<<Although we do not know who owned our First Folio in the seventeenth century, we can generalise about the sort of person who might have first purchased it. Originally priced  at £1, this book was something of a luxury item, and it is in fact said that the English aristocracy owned most of the copies for the first 200 years. Certainly, the book was in the hands of the aristocracy by the eighteenth century. The volume still bears the armorial bookplate of the fifth Earl of Inchiquin (afterwards Marquis of Thomond) of Taplow Court, Buckinghamshire (1726-1808) who apparently acquired the book c.1780. The name 'Inchiquin' is also inscribed across the top of the opening of The Tempest. After this, we know that the book belonged to a John Haes of Stockwell thanks to a note left by J. O. Halliwell (later Halliwell-Phillipps), the bibliophile and prolific writer on Shakespeare, who purchased the book from Haes through Mr Adlard of Bartholomew Close on 22 August 1855. Halliwell-Phillipps sold the book to William Euing the following year, and the letter which accompanied it to Glasgow is still attached to the front flyleaf. In this letter, Halliwell-Phillipps states that he had three copies of the First Folio, of which this is his 'second best'; although the price of the book is not stated, it is described as being in remarkably fine condition generally for a 'low priced book'. The book was bequested to Glasgow University by William Euing along with the rest of his library when he died in 1874.

Halliwell-Phillipps described this copy as being 'neither ragged nor rotten'. In fact, in common with most other surviving First Folios, the book shows considerable signs of wear and use, and many of its pages are stained and dirt engrained. However, evidence of heavy use by previous owners can offer us historical insights into earlier reading habits, and our copy is made particularly interesting for its annotations. Although anonymous, the marginalia are of importance since they suggest that the annotator actually saw the plays being acted contemporaneously; and while many of Shakespeare's plays had been first enacted some twenty five years before the production of the First Folio, this may still be regarded as a fairly immediate reaction to the works of one of the greatest playwrights.

http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/images/exhibitions/month/BD8b1_workes.jpg

The comments accompanying the names of the principal actors, for instance, would seem to suggest that the annotator knew or at least had seen some of the actors. For example, 'know' is written in by the name of Robert Benfield, 'by eyewittnesse' by that of John Lowine, and 'by report' underneath Richard Burbadge. The name of William Shakespeare, which heads the list, is accompanied by the intriguing comment 'Leass for making'*.
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http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/leas

Leas, n. [Old English from: lēasian "to lie"; lēasettan "to pretend"; lēascræft "deceit, art of lying"]

1) falsehood, lie
2) mistake
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John Taylor the Water Poet

The Praise of Hemp-Seed. With the Voyage of Mr. Roger Bird and the Writer hereof, in a Boat of Brown-Paper, from

London to Quinborough in Kent.

Spencer, and Shakespea[R]e did in Art exc[E]ll,
Sir Edward D[Y]er, Greene, Nash, [D]aniell.
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Art Neuendorffer