Printers' Ink, September 21, 1922: "Advertising in Shakespeare's Time" by Earnest Elmo Calkins
A 232-page weekly issue of Printers' Ink, filed for Earnest Elmo Calkins of the New York agency Calkins & Holden.
What it is
A 232-page weekly issue of Printers' Ink, filed for Earnest Elmo Calkins of the New York agency Calkins & Holden. His two-page article, Advertising in Shakespeare's Time (pp. 25 to 26), argues that Elizabethan London already had advertising agents. Most ads then were want ads called siquises, after their opening words Si Quis, "if anyone", posted in the central aisle of St. Paul's. Calkins reads Ben Jonson's play Every Man Out of His Humour, where Shift, a con man, writes and posts siquises for clients, and he reprints Shift's two bills: a young gentleman usher seeking a lady to serve, and a tutor in smoking seeking a newly rich heir. He glosses the slang and the Latin close. The same issue carries J. R. Sprague on why retailers fail, a Weyerhaeuser lumber campaign, W. Livingston Larned on placing the name-plate, and an unsigned piece on repetition within an ad.
Why read it now
Read this for history, not technique. Its useful point is that the want ad, the oldest paid format, was already written to one reader with one need. "If there be any lady or gentlewoman" opens with a condition that filters the audience, the job a targeting line or an if-then headline does now. Both bills also stack precise details, from the usher's little legs to his black satin suit, which is still how classified and marketplace copy earns belief. What is weak: Calkins treats a satirical stage character as evidence of a real trade, and the bills are Jonson's inventions, as he admits. The siquis was a real Elizabethan form; the agent as con man is a playwright's joke, not data. The unsigned article on repetition in the same issue claims a suggestion repeated often enough moves nearly anyone. Research on the mere exposure effect supports repetition, but wear-out studies show returns fall as the same ad keeps running. Use: open a hiring or lead ad the way a siquis does, with an "if you are" line that names the exact reader, then give three concrete details.
Passages worth keeping
There were advertising agents in the reign of Good Queen Bess, and a sorry lot they must have been according to the evidence of the books and plays of that time.
مهنة وكيل الإعلان قديمة تعود إلى عهد إليزابيث الأولى، لكن سمعتها في أدب ذلك العصر كانت سيئة.
and were called "siquises," from the two words with which they nearly all commenced, Si Quis, meaning "if anyone."
سُميت الإعلانات باسم الكلمتين اللتين تبدأ بهما، ومعناهما «إن كان أحد»، أي أنها كانت تنادي قارئًا بعينه منذ أول كلمة.
a threadbare shark; one that never was a soldier, but lives upon lendings.
هكذا يصف جونسون شخصية كاتب الإعلانات في مسرحيته: محتال فقير يدّعي ماضيًا لم يعشه ويعيش على الديون.
If there be any lady or gentlewoman of good carriage that is desirous to entertain to her private uses, a young, straight, and upright gentleman
الإعلان يبدأ بشرط يحدد القارئة المقصودة، ثم يصف المعروض بتفاصيل جسدية وملبس محدد.
The Latin at the end begs the candid reader not to pull the bill down.
حتى الإعلان المعلّق في الكنيسة كان يطلب من القارئ ألا ينزعه، فبقاء الإعلان في مكانه كان جزءًا من نجاحه.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
Read the original archive.org
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