FirstFolio5

Answer Prepared by: Greg T. **
 * WHAT IS THE FIRST FOLIO AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? WHAT STILL EXISTS OF THE FIRST FOLIO? WHERE IS THE WORLD’S LARGEST COLLECTION OF EXISTING FIRST FOLIOS TODAY? HOW WAS THIS COLLECTION AMASSED? WHERE ARE OTHER COPIES NOT IN THIS COLLECTION TODAY?

The word “folio” is defined as a large sheet of paper folded once in the middle, making two leaves or four pages of a book or manuscript; the First Folio specifically describes the first published works of William Shakespeare. Published approximately 7 years after his death, the First Folio contained 36 plays and was around 900 pages long. It included his most famous works: Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream to name a few. In Shakespeare’s time, there were no copyright laws. As a result, if Shakespeare had taken his plays to a publishing firm, there was a great likelihood that they would have been sold to a rival acting troupe. Because his livelihood was from the performance of his plays, Shakespeare guarded his works. According to the William Shakespeare Info website section entitled “A Comprehensive Description of the First Folio”, after Shakespeare’s death, two fellow actors and close friends, John Heminge and Henry Condell, collated his works from “quartos” and “foul papers”. A “quarto” is a book whose pages were made by folding a sheet of paper twice to form four leaves, and “foul papers” were drafts of plays given to the actors. Heminge and Condell were the editors and William Jaggard and Edward Blount were the publishers of the First Folio.

The importance of the First Folio is immense. The publishing of Shakespeare’s works saved many of his most famous plays from extinction. Additionally, Heminge and Condell organized the plays into the categories of comedies, histories, and tragedies. The First Folio solidified the genius that is Shakespeare and allowed him to earn the title of the best playwright to ever live. On top of all of that, the First Folio provided a copper-engraving picture of William Shakespeare, also known as the Martin Droeshout Engraving, allowing people to see the man behind the plays.

Today, 238 of the original 500 copies of the First Folio still exist. The Folger Shakespeare Library holds the most copies with 79, almost a third of the world’s copies. They were able to amass such a collection with the help of Henry Folger, one of the founders of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

[|Here is a video about the First Folio]

Here is a link to the [|Folger Shakespeare Library Website]

Works Cited

Cooper, Tarnya. Searching for Shakespeare. 1st. 1. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. Print.

Laroque, Francoise. Age Of Shakespeare. 1st. 1. New York, NY: Abrams, 1993. Print.

"The First Folio." William Shakespeare Info. William Shakespeare Info, 2005. Web. 12 Apr 2010. <[]>.