from THE COMPLETE PELICAN SHAKESPEARE
xlix-lii
 So far as we know, only a few pages of a play in
Shakespeare’s hand exists, a fragment from a play
called Sir Thomas More
 We do have printed texts that have survived as either
quartos or folios
 A page obtained by folding a full
sheet into four leaves upon which 8
pages of text are printed
 Each group of 4 leaves (called a
"gathering" or "quire") could be sewn
through the central fold to attach it to
the other gatherings to form a book.
 The actual size of a quarto book
depends on the size of the full sheet
of paper on which it was printed
 At right, the title page from the first
quarto edition of AMND (1600)
 In the hand press period (up to about 1820) books were
manufactured by printing text on both sides of a full sheet of
paper and then folding the paper one or more times into a group
of leaves or "gathering". The binder would sew the gatherings
(sometimes also called "signatures") through their inner hinges
and attached to cords in the spine to form the book block.
 Before the covers were bound to the book, the block of text pages
was sometimes trimmed along the three unbound edges to open
the folds of the paper and to produce smooth edges for the book.
When the leaves were not trimmed, the reader would have to cut
open the leaf edges using a knife.
 Books made by printing two pages of text on each side of a sheet
of paper, which is then folded once to form two leaves or four
pages, are referred to as folios
Mr. William Shakespeares
Comedies, Histories, &
Tragedies is the 1623 published
collection of William
Shakespeare's plays. Modern
scholars commonly refer to it as
the First Folio.
The preferred format for works of importance. The fact
that Shakespeare’s works were published in a folio
edition indicates how far up the social scale the
theatrical profession had risen during his lifetime.
THE FIRST FOLIO was an expensive book, selling for
between 15 and 18 shillings ($150-$180 in modern terms)
 20 were first published as quartos during his lifetime
 The remaining plays were found only in the folio
 Authorized by the King’s Men
 Many texts in the folio differ from earlier quartos
 Most significant differences are found in two texts of
King Lear, but also Hamlet, Othello and Troilus and
Cressida
 Many reasons account for this
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original texts were not for reading, but for the actors
the playwright was an employee of the company
actors made changes during the course of a run
oftentimes, scripts were collaborations
plays were revised when reintroduced into the repertory
 Shakespeare had no interest in publishing his works
 Because the original texts were fluid, they have always
had to be edited
From the BAD QUARTO of Hamlet
• No early text survives that read as
modern texts
• Modern editions are the results of
editorial invention
• Is it what Shakespeare really wrote?
• No one knows for certain…we do know
that Shakespeare intended his scripts to
be performed and not read
 Folio divides the works into three genres
 Comedy
 History
 Tragedy
 Still there is confusion, TRIOLUS AND CRESSIDA was
printed with the tragedies, though in its quarto edition
it was declared to be a witty comedy
 The title of KING LEAR differs from quarto to folio
 Shakespeare’s last play on the stage was called ALL IS
TRUE but was published as HENRY VIII
 The plays about Roman history—JULIUS CAESAR,
CORIOLANUS and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA are
grouped as tragedies
 CYMBELINE and TROILUS AND CRESSIDA were
listed as tragedies rather than comedies
 Shakespeare seems to hate these divisions into genre
as he mocks its use in AMND and HAMLET
 Only the arrangement of the histories is systematic in
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the folio
Order of the comedies and tragedies seems arbitrary
THE TEMPEST is the first play in the volume
Modern readers have come to expect a chronological
ordering of the texts
Genres have also been revised…modern editions now
include a fourth category, Romance, which includes
PERICLES, CYMBELINE, THE WINTER’S TALE and
THE TEMPEST
 Some plays might best be described in this manner for
example…
 THE WINTER’S TALE
 PERICLES
 MEASURE FOR MEASURE
 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA
 perhaps MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
His popular poem VENUS AND
ADONIS was reprinted eleven
times between 1593 and 1602
It was primarily
because of his poetry
that Shakespeare was
considered a serious
literary figure in
Elizabethan England
 The Comedies
 Two Gentlemen of Verona (1591-2)
 Taming of the Shrew (1589-92)
 The Comedy of Errors (1594)
 Love’s Labours Lost (1595)
 A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595-6)
 The Merchant of Venice (1596-97)
 Merry Wives of Windsor (1600-01)
 Much Ado About Nothing (1598)
 As You Like It (1599)
 The Comedies (continued)
 Twelfth Night, or What You Will (1601)
 Troilus and Cressida (1601-02)
 Measure for Measure (1604)
 All’s Well That Ends Well (1605)
 Pericles (1608)
 Cymbeline (1610)
 The Winter’s Tale (1611)
 The Tempest (1611)
 HISTORIES
 First Part of Henry VI (1592)
 Henry VI, Part 2 (1591)
 Henry VI, Part 3 (1591)
 Richard III (1592)
 Richard II (1595-96)
 King John (1595-97)
 First Part of Henry IV (1596-97)
 Henry IV, Part 2 (1597-98)
 Henry V (1599)
 Henry VIII (All is True) (1613)
 TRAGEDIES
 Titus Andronicus (1591-92)
 Romeo and Juliet (1595-96)
 Julius Caesar (1599)
 Hamlet (1600-01)
 Othello (1604)
 Timon of Athens (1605)
 King Lear (1605-06)
 Macbeth (1606)
 Antony and Cleopatra (1606-07)
 Coriolanus (1608)
 W.W. Greg, The Shakespeare First Folio (1955)
 Charlton Hinman, The Printing and Proof-Reading of
the First Folio of Shakespeare (1963)
 J.K. Walton, The Quarto Copy for the First Folio of
Shakespeare (1971)
 Charlton Hinman, The 2nd Edition of the Norton
Facsimile of the First Folio (1996)
 Stanley Wells, etal. William Shakespeare: A Textual
Companion, the Oxford editions of Shakespeare.