Play on the lute, beholding the towns burn.” “Plantagenet, I will – and like thee, Nero, Subsequent versions of this play up to the standard versions used today, such as The Complete Pelican Shakespeare (2002), now include the name Nero. A good example of this is this quote from Henry VI, Part I, Act I, Scene 4, lines 95-96: They added mythological and Classical allusions which the typesetters of the First Folio missed. The editors of the Second Folios updated some of the language, corrected hundreds of typographical errors, and made “1679 `deliberate editorial’ changes, 459 alterations of grammar, 374 changes affecting the thought, 359 affecting meter, and 357 affecting style, and 130 changes pertaining to the action.” (Black and Shaaber, 45).
In Shakespeare’s time, plays were considered merely low brow entertainments, not worthy of serious study.īy 1632 Shakespeare’s plays were 40 years old, and some of the language used in the First Folio had become dated. Jonson’s and Shakespeare’s folios were the first collections of drama meant to be read as a book, giving printed drama a place of esteem in the world of English literature. The playwright Ben Jonson, Shakespeare’s contemporary, published a collection of his own plays in a folio version in 1616.
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?” Humanities & Fine Arts Librarian, those crazy hieroglyphics!”
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