First Folio
The First Folio, formally titled Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, is the first collected edition of the dramatic works of English playwright William Shakespeare, published in 1623 in London, seven years after his death in 1616.[1] Compiled and edited by Shakespeare's longtime colleagues and fellow actors in the King's Men, John Heminges and Henry Condell, the volume aimed to present authoritative texts "published according to the True Originall Copies" and prevent the circulation of inferior versions.[2] Printed primarily by Isaac Jaggard, with Edward Blount as a key publisher, it was the first folio-format book in England dedicated exclusively to plays, marking a shift in the perceived status of drama from ephemeral entertainment to enduring literature.[3][4] The First Folio includes 36 of Shakespeare's plays—18 previously unpublished, such as Macbeth, The Tempest, and Julius Caesar—organized for the first time into the genres of comedies, histories, and tragedies, thereby establishing the canonical structure of his oeuvre.[5][6] Its publication preserved plays that might otherwise have been lost, serving as the primary source for about half of Shakespeare's dramatic output and cementing his reputation as a literary giant whose works transcended the stage.[1]Origins and Context
Historical Background
William Shakespeare began his theatrical career in London around 1592, joining the acting company known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men in 1594, where he served as both playwright and shareholder.[7] The company, under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth I's Lord Chamberlain, performed at venues like the Theatre and the Curtain before constructing the Globe Theatre in 1599 using materials from the dismantled Theatre, marking a significant milestone in establishing a dedicated playhouse on the south bank of the Thames.[8] Following the accession of King James I in 1603, the troupe was renamed the King's Men and received royal patronage, continuing to thrive with Shakespeare as a principal dramatist until his retirement around 1613.[7] Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, in Stratford-upon-Avon at the age of 52, leaving behind a legacy of dramatic works that had been performed extensively by his company but remained vulnerable to loss without permanent records.[9] Prior to 1623, the publication of Shakespeare's plays occurred sporadically in inexpensive quarto editions, with nineteen individual plays appearing in print between 1594 and 1622, beginning with Titus Andronicus and Henry VI, Part 2 in 1594.[10][11] These quartos, often printed without authorial oversight and sometimes based on memorial reconstructions or actors' parts, represented only about half of Shakespeare's output, leaving the texts of the remaining plays—such as Macbeth, The Tempest, and Julius Caesar—unpublished and at risk of being forgotten or corrupted through oral transmission and unauthorized performances.[4] This fragmented landscape reflected the Elizabethan and Jacobean theater industry's focus on live performance over textual preservation, where plays were considered ephemeral commodities controlled by acting companies rather than literary properties owned by authors.[4] Key figures in addressing this vulnerability were John Heminges and Henry Condell, longtime members of the Lord Chamberlain's Men and King's Men who had acted alongside Shakespeare and managed the company's affairs.[4] As fellow shareholders, they possessed access to Shakespeare's original manuscripts and company records, which they later drew upon to compile a collected edition, motivated by a desire to safeguard his works from further loss or piracy.[12] Shakespeare himself acknowledged their close ties in his 1616 will, bequeathing each 26 shillings and 8 pence to purchase memorial rings, underscoring their role as trusted preservers of his legacy.[4] The initiative for a folio edition emerged amid a burgeoning cultural interest in authoritative, collected works of dramatists, exemplified by Ben Jonson's Workes of 1616, the first folio-format collection of English plays that elevated theater texts to the status of classical literature.[13] Jonson's ambitious project, which included masques, poems, and plays in a prestigious large-format volume, demonstrated the economic viability of such editions for affluent readers and collectors, inspiring similar efforts to canonize contemporary authors like Shakespeare.[13] This shift was driven by both the desire to honor Shakespeare's contributions to the King's Men and the practical need to control textual dissemination in an era of rampant unauthorized reprints, ensuring his dramatic corpus endured beyond the stage.[4]Publication Initiative
John Heminges and Henry Condell, longtime fellow actors of William Shakespeare in the King's Men acting company, took the lead in commissioning the First Folio as a means to compile and preserve his dramatic works for posterity.[14] As editors, they emphasized in their prefatory address to the readers that the collection drew from authentic company manuscripts and "good" copies, aiming to supplant the often corrupt versions circulating in earlier quartos.[15] Their initiative stemmed from a commitment to safeguard Shakespeare's legacy seven years after his death in 1616, ensuring that 18 previously unpublished plays reached print for the first time.[4] The publication effort involved a consortium of publishers, primarily bookseller Edward Blount and printer Isaac Jaggard. Blount held publication rights to several Shakespeare plays, including Troilus and Cressida, which he had acquired earlier, making him a key financier and rights holder for the project.[16] Isaac Jaggard, who inherited his father William Jaggard's printing business in 1623, oversaw the physical production at the family's shop; William had previously printed unauthorized Shakespeare quartos, but the Folio marked a collaborative, authorized endeavor under the editors' guidance.[17] The project likely commenced in late 1621 or early 1622, with printing extending over nearly two years due to the volume's scale.[16] On November 8, 1623, Blount and Jaggard formally entered the work into the Stationers' Register, securing their rights to "Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. Published according to the True Originall Copies," which encompassed 36 plays divided into those genres.[18] Financially, the venture was ambitious for its time, with an estimated initial print run of around 750 copies to balance costs and market demand.[19] Bound copies retailed for approximately £1, equivalent to a laborer's monthly wage, while unbound sheets sold for 15 shillings, reflecting the Folio's status as a luxury item aimed at affluent patrons and collectors.[19]Production Process
Printing and Publishers
The First Folio was printed at William Jaggard's printing house, located at the corner of Barbican and Aldersgate Street in London, under the direction of his son Isaac Jaggard and the publisher Edward Blount.[20] The production utilized two hand-operated presses, printing two pages at a time on large sheets that were folded to form the folio format, a process that spanned approximately two years from early 1622 to late 1623.[21][22] This timeline reflects the ambitious scale of the project, which involved compiling and setting over 900 double-columned pages of text from diverse manuscript and quarto sources.[23] The printing faced significant logistical challenges, as multiple plays were typeset and printed simultaneously to meet the syndicate's goals, contributing to typographical errors and inconsistencies across copies.[24] Corrections were often made mid-run, resulting in variant readings between sheets, while the use of mixed typefaces—primarily roman for main text and italic for emphasis—along with decorative elements like the copperplate engraving of the Droeshout portrait on the title page, added to the complexity.[25] Delays arose from disputes over legal rights to previously published quartos and the labor-intensive typesetting, which occasionally halted progress, such as during negotiations for plays like Troilus and Cressida.[26] Blount, a prominent bookseller, primarily oversaw the comedies section, while the Jaggards managed the histories and tragedies, dividing responsibilities to expedite the overall effort despite these hurdles.[27] An estimated 750 copies were produced in this initial print run, of which around 235 survive today, many in institutional collections.[4] Bindings varied, but contemporary examples often featured plain calfskin covers, sometimes with blind-tooled decoration, reflecting the book's status as a luxury item priced at about £1 when bound.[23]Compositors and Textual Analysis
The identification of the five principal compositors, designated A through E, who set the type for the First Folio was established through bibliographical analysis by W.W. Greg and Charlton Hinman.[28][29] Hinman's examination of typographical features, including spelling patterns, punctuation, and capitalization, allowed for the attribution of specific sections to individual compositors based on their consistent habits.[29] For instance, Compositor B, who worked extensively on the tragedies, is recognizable by quirks such as frequent use of "bee" for "be" and a preference for certain italic fonts; this compositor set the majority of Hamlet. The textual sources for the Folio's plays varied, drawing from authorial manuscripts, theatrical promptbooks, and eighteen previously published quartos.[28] Among the quartos, distinctions between "good" (authoritative, often from scribal copies) and "bad" (inaccurate, possibly reconstructed from memory or performance) editions affected the Folio's reliability; editors corrected errors from bad quartos where possible, while unpublished plays relied on manuscript copies.[27] A notable example is King Lear, where the Folio text derives from a corrected manuscript—likely a promptbook—offering superior readings and stage directions compared to the 1608 quarto.[30] During production, stop-press corrections—alterations made after printing began but before a full run—introduced variants across copies, with over 500 such changes documented, primarily fixing compositorial errors like omitted words or punctuation.[29] While the Folio generally achieves greater textual accuracy than the quartos through proofreading, it retains compositorial inconsistencies, including mislineation that disrupted verse structure and occasional substitutions influenced by the compositors' habits.[27] Modern scholarship, particularly Hinman's collation of eighty Folger Library copies in his 1968 Norton Facsimile edition, quantifies the compositors' contributions, revealing that Compositor B set about 40% of the volume, underscoring the uneven workload among the team. This analysis highlights how individual hands shaped the final text, informing ongoing debates about editorial interventions in Shakespeare's works.Structure and Contents
Arrangement of Plays
The First Folio divides its 36 plays into three distinct genres—Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies—a classification introduced by editors John Heminge and Henry Condell to reflect the perceived nature and thematic focus of Shakespeare's works.[4] This arrangement marked the first time Shakespeare's plays were systematically grouped in this way, prioritizing dramatic categories over chronological order or previous quarto publications.[31] Of the 36 plays, 18 appear in print for the first time in the Folio, including The Tempest, Macbeth, Twelfth Night or What You Will, Measure for Measure, and Julius Caesar, while the remaining 18 were previously issued in individual quartos but often reordered here. The volume uses separate pagination for each genre section: Comedies (pp. 1–302), Histories (pp. 1–199, inserted after Comedies), and Tragedies (pp. 1–307 approx.). Troilus and Cressida is listed in the table of contents under Tragedies but physically printed between the Histories and Tragedies sections in a separate inserted quire, often unpaginated or numbered 79–93 in some copies due to printing adjustments. The Comedies section comprises 14 plays, spanning pages 1 to 302, beginning with The Tempest (a late romance placed first possibly for its ceremonial masque elements and recent court performance) and concluding with The Winter's Tale.[31] The plays are as follows:
The Histories section includes 10 plays across pages 1 to 199, focusing on English monarchs from King John to Henry VIII. The sequence is:
| Play Title | Starting Page |
|---|---|
| The Life and Death of King John | 1 |
| The Tragedy of King Richard the Second | 22 |
| The First Part of King Henry the Fourth | 43 |
| The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth | 69 |
| The Life of King Henry the Fifth | 96 |
| The First Part of King Henry the Sixth | 121 |
| The Second Part of King Henry the Sixth | 147 |
| The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth | 174 |
| The Tragedy of King Richard the Third | 205 |
| The Life of Henry the Eight | 231 |
| Play Title | Starting Page |
|---|---|
| The Tragedy of Troilus and Cressida | ~79 |
| The Tragedy of Coriolanus | 1 |
| The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus | 30 |
| The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet | 53 |
| The Life of Timon of Athens | 74 |
| The Tragedy of Julius Caesar | 101 |
| The Tragedy of Macbeth | 131 |
| The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark | 152 |
| The Tragedy of King Lear | 183 |
| The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice | 215 |
| The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra | 246 |
| Cymbeline, King of Britain | 277 |