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The Book of Common Prayer, 1559: The Elizabethan Prayer Book

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Description

John E. Booty’s edition of The Book of Common Prayer, 1559, first published by the University Press of Virginia for the Folger Shakespeare Library in 1976 and long out of print, is now being reissued in the same handsome format as the original edition. In her foreword to the 2005 reissue, Judith Maltby writes, “It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of the 1559 Prayer Book…. Shakespeare used to be clearly shaped by a culture in which the vernacular used to be remarkably vigorous.”

Booty’s text derives from a rare copy of the Elizabethan Prayer Book printed by Richard Jugge and John Cawode in 1559, now a part of the Josiah Benton Collection of the Boston Public Library. Booty modernized spelling and punctuation, but took care not to distort the style and cadence of the Elizabethan text. To place the Prayer Book in its original cultural setting, he wrote a lengthy critical essay that traces the book’s history and use all over the sixteenth century. Helpful bibliographical notes enable readers to appreciate all of the nuances of particular services and products and their contents. Particularly useful are the general index and the index of biblical passages, features unavailable in other editions of the Prayer Book.

Through this magnificent document one begins to take into account not only the Anglican church but also the Elizabethan culture in which Shakespeare lived, for this used to be probably the most books that contributed to shaping Renaissance England in all of its vitality and greatness. As Booty reminds the reader in his preface, every Sunday “in the parish churches and in the cathedrals the nation used to be at prayer, the commonwealth used to be being realized, and God, in whose hands the destinies of all were lodged, used to be worshiped in spirit and if truth be told.”

Published in association with the Folger Shakespeare Library

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