First Folio

Printing

The contents of the First Folio were compiled by John Heminges and Henry Condell; the members of the Stationers Company who published the book were the booksellers Edward Blount and the father/son team of William and Isaac Jaggard. William Jaggard has seemed an odd choice by the King's Men because he had published the questionable collection The Passionate Pilgrim as Shakespeare's, and in 1619 had printed new editions of 10 Shakespearean quartos to which he did not have clear rights, some with false dates and title pages (the False Folio affair). Indeed, his contemporary Thomas Heywood, whose poetry Jaggard had pirated and misattributed to Shakespeare, specifically reports that Shakespeare was "much offended with M. Jaggard (that altogether unknown to him) presumed to make so bold with his name."

Heminges and Condell emphasised that the Folio was replacing the earlier publications, which they characterised as "stol'n and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by frauds and stealths of injurious impostors", asserting that Shakespeare's true words "are now offer'd to your view cured, and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers as he conceived them."

The paper industry in England was then in its infancy and the quantity of quality rag paper for the book was imported from France. It is thought that the typesetting and printing of the First Folio was such a large job that the King's Men simply needed the capacities of the Jaggards' shop. William Jaggard was old, infirm and blind by 1623, and died a month before the book went on sale; most of the work in the project must have been done by his son Isaac.

The First Folio's publishing syndicate also included two stationers who owned the rights to some of the individual plays that had been previously printed: William Aspley (Much Ado About Nothing and Henry IV, Part 2) and John Smethwick (Love's Labour's Lost, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet). Smethwick had been a business partner of another Jaggard, William's brother John.

The printing of the Folio was probably done between February 1622 and early November 1623, and the book was entered into the Stationers' Register on 8 November 1623 (Julian calendar). It is possible that the printer originally expected to have the book ready early, since it was listed in the Frankfurt Book Fair catalogue as a book to appear between April and October 1622, but the catalogue contained many books not yet printed by 1622, and the modern consensus is that the entry was simply intended as advance publicity. The first impression had a publication date of 1623, and the earliest record of a retail purchase is an account book entry for 5 December 1623 of Edward Dering (who purchased two); the Bodleian Library, in Oxford, received its copy in early 1624 (which it subsequently sold for £24 as a superseded edition when the Third Folio became available in 1663-1664).

Contents

The 36 plays of the First Folio occur in the order given below.

Plays that had never been published before 1623 are marked accordingly, as are those set into type from manuscripts prepared by Ralph Crane, a professional scrivener employed by the King's Men, who produced high-quality results, with formal act/scene divisions, frequent use of parentheses and hyphenated forms, and other identifiable features. Each play is followed by the type of source used, as determined by bibliographical research.

The term foul papers refers to Shakespeare's working drafts of a play. When completed, a transcript or fair copy of the foul papers would be prepared, by the author or by a scribe. Such a manuscript would have to be heavily annotated with accurate and detailed stage directions and all the other data needed for performance, and then could serve as a prompt book, to be used by the prompter to guide a performance of the play. Any of these manuscripts, in any combination, could be used as a source for a printed text. The label Qn denotes the n th quarto edition of a play.

Comedies

1. The Tempest ^{FF RC}
2. The Two Gentlemen of Verona ^{FF RC}
3. The Merry Wives of Windsor ^RC
4. Measure for Measure ^{FF RC?}
5. The Comedy of Errors ^FF – probably typeset from Shakespeare's "foul papers," lightly annotated
6. Much Ado About Nothing – typeset from a copy of the quarto, lightly annotated
7. Love's Labour's Lost – typeset from a corrected copy of Q1
8. A Midsummer Night's Dream – typeset from a copy of Q2, well-annotated, possibly used as a prompt-book
9. The Merchant of Venice – typeset from a lightly edited and corrected copy of Q1
10. As You Like It ^FF – from a quality manuscript, lightly annotated by a prompter
11. The Taming of the Shrew ^FF – typeset from Shakespeare's "foul papers," somewhat annotated, perhaps as preparation for use as a prompt-book
12. All's Well That Ends Well ^FF – probably from Shakespeare's "foul papers" or a manuscript of them
13. Twelfth Night ^FF – typeset either from a prompt-book or a transcript of one
14. The Winter's Tale ^{FF RC}

Histories

1. King John ^FF – uncertain: a prompt-book, or "foul papers."
2. Richard II – typeset from Q3 and Q5, corrected against a prompt-book
3. Henry IV, Part 1 – typeset from an edited copy of Q5
4. Henry IV, Part 2 – uncertain: some combination of manuscript and quarto text
5. Henry V – typeset from Shakespeare's "foul papers."
6. Henry VI, Part 1 ^FF – likely from an annotated transcript of the author's manuscript
7. Henry VI, Part 2 – probably a Shakespearean manuscript used as a prompt-book
8. Henry VI, Part 3 – like 2H6, probably a Shakespearean prompt-book
9. Richard III – a difficult case: probably typeset partially from Q3, and partially from Q6 corrected against a manuscript (maybe "foul papers")
10. Henry VIII ^FF – typeset from a fair copy of the authors' manuscript

Tragedies

1. Troilus and Cressida – probably typeset from the quarto, corrected with Shakespeare's "foul papers," printed after the rest of the Folio was completed
2. Coriolanus ^FF – set from a high-quality authorial transcript
3. Titus Andronicus – typeset from a copy of Q3 that might have served as a prompt-book
4. Romeo and Juliet – in essence a reprint of Q3
5. Timon of Athens ^FF – set from Shakespeare's foul papers or a transcript of them
6. Julius Caesar ^FF – set from a prompt-book, or a transcript of a prompt-book
7. Macbeth ^FF – probably set from a prompt-book, perhaps detailing an adaptation of the play for a short indoor performance
8. Hamlet – one of the most difficult problems in the First Folio: probably typeset from some combination of Q2 and manuscript sources
9. King Lear – a difficult problem: probably set mainly from Q1 but with reference to Q2, and corrected against a prompt-book
10. Othello – another difficult problem: probably typeset from Q1, corrected with a quality manuscript
11. Antony and Cleopatra ^FF – possibly "foul papers" or a transcript of them
12. Cymbeline ^{FF RC?}

Troilus and Cressida was originally intended to follow Romeo and Juliet, but the typesetting was stopped, probably due to a conflict over the rights to the play; it was later inserted as the first of the tragedies, when the rights question was resolved. It does not appear in the table of contents.

Introductory poem

Ben Jonson wrote a preface to the folio with this poem addressed "To the Reader" facing the Droeshout portrait engraving:

This Figure, that thou here ſeeſt put,
It vvas for gentle Shakeſpeare cut;
Wherein the Grauer had a ſtrife
vvith Nature, to out-doo the life :
O, could he but haue dravvne his vvit
As vvell in braſſe, as he hath hit
His face; the Print vvould then ſurpaſſe
All, that vvas euer vvrit in braſſe.
But, ſince he cannot, Reader, looke
Not on his Picture, but his Booke.

B. I.

Compositors

As far as modern scholarship has been able to determine, the First Folio texts were set into type by five compositors, with different spelling habits, peculiarities, and levels of competence. Researchers have labelled them A through E, A being the most accurate, and E an apprentice who had significant difficulties in dealing with manuscript copy. Their shares in typesetting the pages of the Folio break down like this:

Compositor "E" was most likely one John Leason, whose apprenticeship contract dated only from 4 November 1622. One of the other four might have been a John Shakespeare, of Warwickshire, who apprenticed with Jaggard in 1610 to 1617. ("Shakespeare" was a common name in Warwickshire in that era; John was of no known relation to the playwright.)

The First Folio and variants

W. W. Greg has argued that Edward Knight, the "book-keeper" or "book-holder" (prompter) of the King's Men, did the actual proofreading of the manuscript sources for the First Folio. Knight is known to have been responsible for maintaining and annotating the company's scripts, and making sure that the company complied with cuts and changes ordered by the Master of the Revels.

Some pages of the First Folio—134 out of the total of 900—were proofread and corrected while the job of printing the book was ongoing. As a result, the Folio differs from modern books in that individual copies vary considerably in their typographical errors. There were about 500 corrections made to the Folio in this way. These corrections by the typesetters, however, consisted only of simple typos, clear mistakes in their own work; the evidence suggests that they almost never referred back to their manuscript sources, let alone tried to resolve any problems in those sources. The well-known cruxes in the First Folio texts were beyond the typesetters' capacity to correct.

The Folio was typeset and bound in "sixes"—three sheets of paper, taken together, were folded into a booklet-like quire or gathering of six leaves, 12 pages. Once printed, the "sixes" were assembled and bound together to make the book. The sheets were printed in two-page formes, meaning that pages 1 and 12 of the first quire were printed simultaneously on one side of one sheet of paper (which became the "outer" side); then pages 2 and 11 were printed on the other side of the same sheet (the "inner" side). The same was done with pages 3 and 10, and 4 and 9, on the second sheet, and pages 5 and 8, and 6 and 7, on the third. Then the first quire could be assembled with its pages in the correct order. The next quire was printed by the same method: pages 13 and 24 on one side of one sheet, etc. This meant that the text being printed had to be "cast off"—the compositors had to plan beforehand how much text would fit onto each page. If the compositors were setting type from manuscripts (perhaps messy, revised and corrected manuscripts), their calculations would frequently be off by greater or lesser amounts, resulting in the need to expand or compress. A line of verse could be printed as two; or verse could be printed as prose to save space, or lines and passages could even be omitted (a disturbing prospect for those who prize Shakespeare's works).

The First Folio was reprinted three times in the 17th century, each time by different groups of stationers; these editions are referred to as the Second Folio, Third Folio, and Fourth Folio.

Holdings, sales and valuations

Jean-Christophe Mayer, in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's First Folio (2016), estimates the original retail price of the First Folio to be about 15s (equivalent to £159 in 2025) for an unbound copy, and up to £1 (equivalent to £212 in 2025) for one bound in calfskin. In terms of purchasing power, "a bound folio would be about forty times the price of a single play and represented almost two months' wages for an ordinary skilled worker."

It is believed that around 750 copies of the First Folio were printed, of which there are 235 known surviving copies.

Holdings

The world's largest collection is in the possession of the Folger Shakespeare Library (82 copies) in Washington, D.C., followed by Meisei University (12) in Tokyo, the New York Public Library (six) in New York City, and the British Library (five) in London. The Folger collection alone accounts for more than one third of all known surviving copies. Together, the nine largest First Folio collections comprise more than half of all known extant copies.

Thirty-one American colleges and universities own a total of 38 copies of the First Folio, while seven British universities own 14 copies. Universities in possession of copies include the University of Cambridge (four), the University of Oxford (four), the University of Texas at Austin (three), Princeton University (three), Brown University (two), Harvard University (two), the University of London (two), Carnegie Mellon University (two), Dartmouth College (one), and Yale University (one). Three are also in the possession of the University of California system, with one each at UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UC Irvine. In Canada, the University of Toronto's Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library owns a copy and the University of British Columbia another. Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles holds a copy within the Department of Archives and Special Collections. Ireland's only copy resides in the Old Library at Trinity College Dublin.

A number of copies are held by public libraries. In the United States, the New York Public Library owns six copies. The Boston Public Library, Free Library of Philadelphia (a copy previously owned by John Milton and containing notes in his handwriting), The Dallas Public Library and the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library each hold one copy. In the UK, the Library of Birmingham owns one copy.

Additional copies are owned by the Huntington Library (four), The Shakespeare Centre (three), the Victoria and Albert Museum (three), the Sutro Library (two), the Morgan Library and Museum (two), the Newberry Library, the Fondation Martin Bodmer, the State Library of New South Wales, the Auckland Central City Library, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, and the National Library of Chile.

Sales and valuations

The First Folio is one of the most valuable printed books in the world: a copy sold at Christie's in New York in October 2001 made $6.16 million hammer price (then £3.73m). In October 2020, a copy sold by Mills College at Christie's fetched a price of $10 million, making it the most expensive work of literature ever auctioned.

Oriel College, Oxford, raised a conjectured £3.5 million from the sale of its First Folio to Sir Paul Getty in 2003.

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death in 2016, the Folger Shakespeare Library toured some of its 82 First Folios for display in all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

Discoveries of previously unknown Folios

In 2003, Anthony West identified a book previously thought to be a Second Folio in the collection of Craven Museum in Skipton, North Yorkshire, as a First Folio. It had been donated to the museum in 1936 by a local mill owner. This copy is missing its introductory pages and all the comedies.

On 13 July 2006, a complete copy of the First Folio owned by Dr Williams's Library was auctioned at Sotheby's auction house. The book, which was in its original 17th-century binding, sold for £2,808,000, less than Sotheby's top estimate of £3.5 million. This copy is one of only about 40 remaining complete copies (most of the existing copies are incomplete); only one other copy of the book remains in private ownership.

On 11 July 2008, it was reported that a copy stolen from Durham University, in 1998 had been recovered after being submitted for valuation at the Folger Shakespeare Library. News reports estimated the folio's value at anywhere from £250,000 in total for the First Folio and all the other books and manuscripts stolen (BBC News, 1998), up to $30 million (The New York Times, 2008). Although the book, once the property of John Cosin, the Bishop of Durham, was returned to the library, it had been mutilated and was missing its cover and title page. The folio was returned to public display on 19 June 2010 after its 12-year absence. Fifty-three-year-old Raymond Scott received an eight-year prison sentence for handling stolen goods, but was acquitted of the theft itself. A July 2010 BBC programme about the affair, Stealing Shakespeare, portrayed Scott as a fantasist and petty thief. In 2012, Scott killed himself in his prison cell.

In November 2014, a previously unknown First Folio was found in a public library in Saint-Omer, Pas-de-Calais, France, where it had lain for 200 years. Confirmation of its authenticity came from Eric Rasmussen of the University of Nevada, Reno, one of the foremost authorities on Shakespeare. The title page and introductory material are missing. The name "Neville", written on the first surviving page, may indicate that it once belonged to Edward Scarisbrick, who fled England due to anti-Catholic repression, attended the Jesuit Saint-Omer College, and was known to use that alias.

In March 2016, Christie's announced that a previously unrecorded copy once owned by 19th-century collector Sir George Shuckburgh-Evelyn would be auctioned on 25 May 2016. According to the Antiques Trade Gazette, an American collector paid £1,600,000 for it; the buyer also successfully bid on copies of the second, third and fourth folios.

In April 2016, another new discovery was announced: a First Folio found in Mount Stuart House on the Isle of Bute, Scotland, that originally belonged to Isaac Reed. It was authenticated by Emma Smith of Oxford University. Smith has cautioned about overstating the importance of the First Folio.