Shakespeare’s First Folio at 400: Discover the Library’s Six Copies in the Polonsky Exhibition
In honor of the 400th anniversary of its publication this year, all six of the Library’s copies of William Shakespeare’s First Folio will be displayed in the Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library’s Treasures from April 22 through October 1, 2023. One copy has already been on view since the exhibition opened in September 2021 and is featured in the audio guide with commentary from Shakespeare scholar Professor James Shapiro (Columbia University). It is joined by five more copies of this historic book, which contains 36 of Shakespeare’s plays. Alongside the First Folios will be an early 17th-century etching of London that depicts the venues where Shakespeare’s plays were first performed, including the Globe Theatre and the Rose Theatre, and the places where these books were first printed and sold. These additions to the Polonsky Exhibition arrive just in time for Shakespeare Day, observed on April 23, the date on which Shakespeare died in 1616 and is also thought to have been born in 1564.
The First Folio is regarded by many as the most important book in the history of English literature. Formally titled Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, this first published collection of Shakespeare’s plays was compiled by John Heminge and Henry Condell, the playwright’s fellow actors and friends who were also shareholders in the Globe Theatre. They likely used earlier editions of individual plays, various versions of production scripts, and Shakespeare’s own working drafts to faithfully reproduce the texts as they were performed. The compilers’ efforts preserved 18 plays—including Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and The Tempest—that might otherwise have been lost forever.
The Folios contain points of interest beyond the texts of the plays themselves. The frontispiece features the now iconic portrait of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout the Younger accompanied by a poem by Shakespeare’s contemporary and sometime rival, Ben Jonson. There is also a list of the 26 actors who performed the plays in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later the King’s Men) theatre company, including Shakespeare himself and Richard Burbage, who originated many of the leading tragic roles. The table of contents shows how the plays were categorized by genre for the first time, although Troilus and Cressida is absent from that page despite its inclusion in most copies, possibly indicating protracted negotiations to include it.
It is believed that between 700 and 750 copies of the First Folio were printed in 1623. They were printed on high-quality paper usually reserved for Bibles, making the First Folio an expensive and ostentatious enterprise. Only 235 copies remain, and each one is unique as a result of the printing process. Errors were discovered and corrections made, leading to interruptions, alterations, irregularities, and inconsistencies. Among the Library’s Folios are copies from the founding collections donated by William Astor, James Lenox, and Samuel J. Tilden that each have their own small differences, such as an extra title page in a Lenox copy.
These remarkable books will be on display through October 1. Plan your visit to see the Library’s First Folios along with over 200 other treasures from the Library’s collections in the Polonsky Exhibition. Take a closer look with our digital guide on the Bloomberg Connects app.
Related Reading:
Shakespeare's First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book
by Emma Smith
This is a biography of a book: the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays printed in 1623 and known as the First Folio. It begins with the story of its first purchaser in London in December 1623, and goes on to explore the ways people—owners, readers, forgers, collectors, actors, scholars, booksellers— have interacted with this iconic book over the four hundred years of its history.
The Millionaire and the Bard: Henry Folger's Obsessive Hunt for Shakespeare's First Folio
by Andrea Mays
Today it is the most valuable book in the world. It is the book that rescued the name of William Shakespeare and half of his plays from oblivion. The Millionaire and the Bard tells the miraculous and romantic story of the making of the First Folio, and of the American industrialist whose thrilling pursuit of the book became a lifelong obsession.
How to Read a Shakespearean Play Text
by Eugene Giddens
This book offers a detailed consideration of how Shakespearean play texts came about, including the material constraints and cultures of performance, publishing, printing, and reading that produced them. It then considers how these conditions impact upon reading early printed play texts. Giddens provides a practical 'how to' guide to the original printed texts of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. He explains how the features of the play text came about, what the different elements mean, and who created them.
Portraits of Shakespeare
by Katherine Duncan-Jones
Within Shakespeare’s lifetime, there was already some curiosity about what the writer of such brilliant poems, sonnets, and plays looked like. Yet, like so much else about him, Shakespeare’s appearance is mysterious. Why is it so difficult to find images of him that were definitely made during his life? Which images are most likely to have been made by those close to Shakespeare, and why do these differ from each other? Also, why do newly ‘discovered’ images claimed as representations of the playwright, emerge with such regularity? Shakespeare scholar Katherine Duncan-Jones examines these questions, beginning with an analysis of the tradition of the ‘author portrait’ before, during, and after Shakespeare’s life.
Shakespeare's Theatre: A History
by Richard Dutton
Examines the theatre spaces used by William Shakespeare, and explores these spaces in relation to the social and political framework of the Elizabethan era. The text journeys from the performing spaces of the provincial inns, guild halls and houses of the gentry of the Bard’s early career, to the purpose-built outdoor playhouses of London, including the Globe, the Theatre, and the Curtain, and the royal courts of Elizabeth and James I.
England in the Age of Shakespeare
by Jeremy Black
How did it feel to hear Macbeth's witches chant of "double, double toil and trouble" at a time when magic and witchcraft were as real as anything science had to offer? How were justice and forgiveness understood by the audience who first watched King Lear; how were love and romance viewed by those who first saw Romeo and Juliet? In England in the Age of Shakespeare, Jeremy Black takes readers on a tour of life in the streets, homes, farms, churches, and palaces of the Bard's era. Panning from play to audience and back again, Black shows how Shakespeare's plays would have been experienced and interpreted by those who paid to see them.
Ungentle Shakespeare: Scenes from His Life
by Katherine Duncan-Jones
This lively, readable and challenging new biography, by the editor of the acclaimed Arden edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets, takes a fresh look at an enduring cultural icon, about whose life it is widely claimed that nothing is known. As a result Shakespeare has tended to be viewed in Romantic isolation: the Bard as lonely inspired singer enthroned on a mountain peak. The aim of this study is to replace the image of the lonely genius with one of Shakespeare as deeply involved, even enmired, in the geographical, social and literary context of his time.
On-site use
The Making of Shakespeare's First Folio
by Emma Smith
The Making of Shakespeare's First Folio offers the first comprehensive biography of the earliest collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. Emma Smith tells the story of the First Folio's origins, locating it within the social and political context of Jacobean London and bringing in the latest scholarship on the seventeenth-century book trade.
On-site use
Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more