Folios are meant to be impressive works, like coffee table books. During Shakespeare’s life, (1564-1616), many of his plays had been printed in a quarto format, which is half the size of a folio. The Folger Shakespeare Library, famous for its collection of 82 First Folios, also owns 58 copies of the Second Folio.īut what is a folio and what makes it so special? Folios are large books comprised of pages that have only been folded once before being gathered into quires (four sheets of paper folded to form eight leaves) that are then stacked and sewn together. No definite census can be found reporting the number of Second Folio copies printed, but in 1990 there were 178 Second Folios in libraries in the United States, as well as several more in international libraries (Otness, 65). (Please watch this video from Peter Harrington Booksellers to learn more about the Smethwick version of the Second Folio.) Click on this image to the right to see a close-up of the watermark in a page of our Smethwick Second Folio. Willamette’s copy of the Second Folio was printed for John Smethwick, which is one of the rarest versions of this work. John Smethwick held the copyright for Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and The Taming of the Shrew. Each of these publishers owned the copyrights to different plays written by Shakespeare. Thomas Cotes printed all the copies of the Second Folio for five different publishers: John Smethwick, William Aspley, Richard Hawkins, Richard Meighen, and Robert Allot. Of the 750 copies printed, only 235 copies of the First Folio remain today.īy 1632, William Jaggard and Edward Blount had died, and the copies of the First Folio had sold out. Typesetting issues are one of the factors that differentiate the Second Folio from its famous sibling, the First Folio, printed in 1623, by William Jaggard for Edward Blount, John Smethwick, and William Aspley. The “hieroglyphics” were 17th century typesetting, which even 21st century students struggle to read. This is how Betsy Perry started her article, “ Vault Harbors $1000 Book,” in the Januissue of the Willamette Collegian about the library’s valuable rare books. “Pardon me sir, but are you referring to that copy of Shakespeare’s Second Folio which you have in your hand?” Out of perhaps 750 copies printed, 235 are known to remain, most of which are kept in either public archives or private collections.Humanities & Fine Arts Librarian, those crazy hieroglyphics!” The Folio includes all of the plays generally accepted to be Shakespeare's, with the exception of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Edward III, and the two lost plays, Cardenio and Love's Labour's Won. Eighteen of the plays in the First Folio, including The Tempest, Twelfth Night, and Measure for Measure among others, are not known to have been previously printed. It was dedicated to the "incomparable pair of brethren" William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke and his brother Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery (later 4th Earl of Pembroke).Īlthough 19 of Shakespeare's plays had been published in quarto before 1623, the First Folio is arguably the only reliable text for about 20 of the plays, and a valuable source text for many of those previously published. It is considered one of the most influential books ever published.Printed in folio format and containing 36 plays (see list of Shakespeare's plays), it was prepared by Shakespeare's colleagues John Heminges and Henry Condell. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies is a collection of plays by William Shakespeare, commonly referred to by modern scholars as the First Folio, published in 1623, about seven years after Shakespeare's death. Wikipedia Rate this definition: 0.0 / 0 votes
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