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What is a First Folio?
Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories & Tragedies is the true title of the collection of plays that scholars and Shakespeare fans fondly refer to as the First Folio.
The First Folio contains 36 of Shakespeare's plays and groups them into comedies, histories, and tragedies. 18 of these plays had never before been published and otherwise might have been lost, including favorites such as Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Twelfth Night.
The First Folio was printed in 1623, 7 years after Shakespeare's death in 1616. The First Folio was followed by the Second Folio in 1623, the Third Folio in 1664, and the Fourth Folio in 1685.
A folio is a large book made by folding sheets of paper (approximately 14 x 18 inches) in half, with each sheet forming 4 pages. This format was usually reserved for history, religion, and other weighty subjects.
The First Folio was the first folio-sized book ever published in England devoted exclusively to plays. Before 1623, about half of Shakespeare's plays were published in quartos – small books made from folding larger sheets of paper twice to create 8 pages per sheet. Quartos were like the easily disposable paperbacks of today, and very few of them survive.
No manuscript copies of the plays written in Shakespeare's handwriting have been found yet. Many people think, therefore, that the First Folio – compiled by his friends and fellow actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, after his death – is the closest thing we have to the plays as he wrote them.
The title page includes the famous Droeshout portrait of Shakespeare, considered an accurate likeness by those who knew him.
Scholars think that about 750 copies of the First Folio were printed, which was a typical print run in the period. 235 First Folios are known to survive, including two discovered in 2016. The Folger Shakespeare Library has 82 copies.
Each copy of the First Folio is unique. Many small changes and corrections were made during the printing process, and over the years successive owners have rebound or otherwise tried to improve their copies.
See and touch a reproduction of First Folio #68 at the table in the center of the exhibition hall. |