Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies is a collection of plays by William Shakespeare, published in 1623, commonly referred to by modern scholars as the First Folio. It is considered one of the most influential books ever published in the English language. 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. 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). Although 18 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. 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; and the two lost plays, Cardenio and Love's Labour's Won. On 23 April 1616, am Shakespeare died in Stratford-upon-Avon, and was buried in the chancel of the Church of the Holy Trinity two days later. After a long career as an actor, dramatist, and sharer in the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men) from c.?1585–90 until c.?1610–13, he was financially well off and among England's most popular dramatists, both on the stage and in print. But his reputation had not yet risen to the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. A funerary monument in Holy Trinity was commissioned, probably by his oldest daughter, and installed, most likely sometime before 1617–18, but a monument in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey was not realised until 1740. William Basse wrote an elegiac poem on him c.?1618–20, but no notices were taken of his death in diplomatic correspondence or newsletters on the continent, nor were any tributes published by European contemporaries. William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke who at the time held the post of Lord Chamberlain, with authority over the King's Men, and directly in charge of Shakespeare as a Groom of the Chamber made no note of his passing. Shakespeare's works both poetic and dramatic had a rich history in print before the publication of the First Folio: from the first publications of Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594), 78 individual printed editions of his works are known. c.?30% (23) of these editions are his poetry, and the remaining c.?70% (55) his plays. Counting by number of editions published before 1623, the best-selling works were Venus and Adonis (12 editions), The Rape of Lucrece (6 editions), and Henry IV, Part 1 (6 editions). Of the 23 editions of the poems, 16 were published in octavo; the rest, and almost all of the editions of the plays, were printed in quarto. The quarto format was made by folding a large sheet of printing paper twice, forming 4 leaves with 8 pages. The average quarto measured 7 by 9 inches (18 by 23 cm) and was made up of c.?9 sheets, giving 72 total pages. Octavos made by folding a sheet of the same size three times, forming 8 leaves with 16 pages were about half as large as a quarto. Since the cost of paper represented c.?50–75% of a book's total production costs, octavos were generally cheaper to manufacture than quartos, and a common way to reduce publishing costs was to reduce the number of pages needed by compressing (using two columns or a smaller typeface) or abbreviating the text. Henry Fitzgeffrey, Certain Elegies (1618)
Editions of individual plays were typically published in quarto and could be bought for 6d (equivalent to £5 in 2018) without a binding. These editions were primarily intended to be cheap and convenient, and read until worn out or repurposed as wrapping paper (or worse), rather than high quality objects kept in a library. Customers who wanted to keep a particular play would have to have it bound, and would typically bind several related or miscellany plays into one volume. Octavos, though nominally cheaper to produce, were somewhat different. From c.?1595–96 (Venus and Adonis) and 1598 (The Rape of Lucrece), Shakespeare's narrative poems were published in octavo. In The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's First Folio, Tara L. Lyons argues that this was partly due to the publisher, John Harrison's, desire to capitalize on the poems' association with Ovid: the Greek classics were sold in octavo, so printing Shakespeare's poetry in the same format would strengthen the association. The octavo generally carried greater prestige, so the format itself would help to elevate their standing. Ultimately, however, the choice was a financial one: Venus and Adonis in octavo needed four sheets of paper, versus seven in quarto, and the octavo The Rape of Lucrece needed five sheets, versus 12 in quarto. Whatever the motivation, the move seems to have had the intended effect: Francis Meres, the first known lit
