The Shakespeare First Folio

Shakespeare’s original manuscript copies of the plays have been gone for centuries, so the early printed editions, including the First Folio, are the closest thing we have to the plays as he wrote them. Out of the 36 plays included in the First Folio, these 18 had never been published before: All’s Well That Ends Well, Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It,  The Comedy of Errors, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, Henry VI, Part 1, Henry VIII, Julius Caesar, King John, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Timon of Athens, Twelfth Night, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Winter’s Tale.

The title page of the First Folio includes an original portrait of Shakespeare, engraved by the artist Martin Droeshout. The Droeshout engraving is one of very few portraits of Shakespeare that are considered authentic; it was approved by those who worked on the First Folio and had known Shakespeare.

The First Folio was created in the years after Shakespeare’s death in 1616. His friends and former colleagues John Heminge and Henry Condell, who were also partners in the King’s Men acting company, brought together his plays.

Heminge and Condell had worked with Shakespeare for years and, like him, were actors and shareholders in the King’s Men. By the time of the First Folio, Heminge was the company’s business manager. Shakespeare left money to both men in his will to buy memorial rings, a sign that he considered them good friends.

The book was published by a London syndicate headed by Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard. Isaac’s father William Jaggard printed it at his London printing shop, but he died before the book was completed. Isaac Jaggard took over the shop after his father’s death.

A folio is a large book made by folding printed sheets of paper in half, with each sheet forming four pages. This format was usually reserved for history, religion, and other weighty subjects. The First Folio was the first folio ever published in England devoted exclusively to plays.

Before 1623, about half of Shakespeare’s plays were published in quartos—small, one-play books made by folding sheets of paper twice, to create eight pages per sheet. Quartos were like the easily disposable paperbacks of today, and relatively few of them survive. A folio was more expensive and sturdier, so it was more likely to last.

We don’t know for sure how many First Folios were printed. Researchers think that there were probably about 750 copies, which was a typical print run at the time. A total of 235 First Folios are currently known to survive, including two that were discovered in 2016.

The scholar Peter Blayney suggests that an unbound copy of the First Folio cost 15 shillings and a copy with a plain calf binding cost a pound (20 shillings), about $200 today.

The First Folio was proofread as it was printed, creating small variations which turn up in some copies but not others. Over time, some copies acquired notes and drawings. Copies were damaged; many have missing pages. Page edges were also trimmed for rebinding, so the page sizes now vary.

The fact that the First Folio preserved 18 of Shakespeare’s plays is essential, of course. But in addition, some of the other 18 plays in the First Folio are quite different from previous editions. The First Folio includes lines and passages in those plays that might also have been lost without it.

Sometimes people disagree as to which version of a line or scene is more accurate. To this day, editors examine passages from the earlier quarto editions and the First Folio as they produce modern Shakespeare editions.

Yes, but not many. Besides the 36 plays in the First Folio, Shakespeare wrote Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen (with John Fletcher). A 39th play, Cardenio, has been lost.

In addition, playwrights in Shakespeare’s day often collaborated. Some scholars have made the case that Shakespeare worked on certain other plays as well.