On the title-page is engraved the Droeshout portrait. Commendatory verses are supplied by Ben Jonson, Hugh Holland, Leonard Digges [q. v.], and I. M., perhaps Jasper Maine [q. v.] The dedication to the brothers William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, and Philip Herbert, earl of Montgomery, as well as an address ‘to the great variety of readers,’ is signed by Shakespeare's friends and fellow-actors, Heming and Condell, who accept a large responsibility for the enterprise. They disclaim ‘ambition either of selfe-profit or fame,’ being solely moved by anxiety to ‘keepe the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare.’ ‘It had bene a thing we confesse worthie to haue bene wished,’ they inform the reader, ‘that the author himselfe had liued to haue set forth and ouerseen his owne writings. … As where (before) we were abus'd with diuerse stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of iniurious impostors that expos'd them; even those are now offer'd to your view cur'd and perfect of their limbes, and all the rest absolute in their numbers as he conceived them.’ The title-page states, too, that all the plays were printed ‘according to the true originall copies.’ But the first-folio text is not in every case superior to that of the sixteen pre-existent quartos, from which it differs invariably, although in varying degrees. The quarto texts of ‘Love's Labour's Lost,’ ‘Midsummer Night's Dream,’ and ‘Richard II’ are, for example, of higher value than the folio texts. On the other hand, the folio first repairs the glaring defects of the quarto versions of ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ and of ‘Henry V.’
About fourteen perfect copies and 170 imperfect copies of the first folio seem now known. One of the finest copies was purchased by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts for 716l. 2s. at the sale of George Daniel's library in 1864. Frederick Locker-Lampson's copy fetched 3,600l. at Sotheby's 23 March 1907.
A reprint unwarrantably purporting to be exact was published in 1807–8 (cf. Notes and Queries, 1st ser. vii. 47). The best reprint was issued in three parts by Lionel Booth in 1861, 1863, 1864. A photo-zincographic reproduction by Sir Henry James, under the direction of Howard Staunton, was issued in sixteen folio parts between Feb. 1864 and Oct. 1865. A reduced photographic facsimile appeared in 1876, with a preface by Halliwell-Phillipps. A collotype facsimile was issued by the Oxford University Press in 1902, with introduction and ‘Census of Extant Copies’ by the present writer. A pamphlet of ‘Additions to the Census’ followed in 1906.
The second folio edition was printed in 1632 by Thomas Cotes for Robert Allot and William Aspley, each of whose names figures as publisher on different copies. To Allot The Second Folio. Blount had transferred, on 16 Nov. 1630, his rights in the sixteen plays which were first licensed for publication in 1623 (Arber, iii. 242–3). The second folio is identical with the first. Charles I's copy is at Windsor, and Charles II's at the British Museum. The ‘Perkins folio,’ now in the Duke of Devonshire's possession, in which Collier introduced forged emendations, was a copy of that of 1632 [see for the controversy, Collier, John Payne]. The third folio was first published in 1663 by Peter The Third Folio.Chetwynde, who reissued it next year with the addition of seven plays, six of which have no claim to admission among Shakespeare's works. ‘Unto this Impression,’ runs the title-page of 1664, ‘is added seven Playes never before printed in folio, viz.: Pericles, Prince of Tyre. The London Prodigall. The History of Thomas Ld. Cromwell. Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. The Puritan Widow. A Yorkshire Tragedy. The Tragedy of Locrine.’ The six spurious pieces were attributed by unprincipled publishers to Shakespeare in his lifetime. The fourth folio, printed in 1685 ‘for H. The Fourth Folio.Herringman, E. Brewster, R. Chiswell, and R. Bentley,’ reprints the folio of 1664 with the spurious appendix.
Since 1685 some two hundred independent editions of the collected works have been published in Great Britain and Ireland, and many Eighteenth-century editors.thousand editions of separate plays. The chief eighteenth-century editors of the collected works were: 1. Nicholas Rowe [q. v.], the earliest critical editor (1709–10, 7 vols.; 2nd edit. 1714). 2. Alexander Pope (1725, 6 vols.; imperfectly ‘collated and corrected.’ Reprints are dated 1728, with contributions by George Sewell [q. v.], 1731, 1735, 1766; by Foulis of Glasgow, 1768; by Baskerville of Birmingham). 3. Lewis Theobald [q. v.], who made some brilliant emendations (1733, 7 vols; eight reprints to 1777). 4. Sir Thomas Hanmer (1744, 6 vols. with glossary and various readings, Oxford, 4to; 2nd edit. 1770–1). 5. Bishop Warburton, who re-edited Pope's version in 1747 in 8 vols. and was severely criticised among others by Thomas Edwards (1699–1757) [q. v.] 6. Dr. Johnson (1765, 8 vols., with his well-known preface and notes; 2nd edit. 1768). 7. Edward Capell [q. v.] (1768, 10 vols., with ‘Notes, various readings, and the School of Shakespeare,’ in 3 vols. 1783). 8. Edmund Malone [q. v.] (1790, 10 vols.). 9. Meanwhile, George
