William Shakespeare | The First Folio

Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, the cause of death not reported. The date of his burial is recorded as April 25, 1616 in the register of Stratford's Holy Trinity Church. In 1623 the same year that Shakespeare's widow, Anne Hathaway Shakespeare, died, the first collection of Shakespeare's works was published. Several of Shakespeare's fellow actors compiled thirty-six of Shakespeare's plays; the published collection was known as the First Folio. (The word "folio" refers to a book made up of sheets of paper folded once to form two leaves of equal size, or four pages.) The First Folio did not include Pericles, Prince of Tyre or The Two Noble Kinsmen. Scholars suggest that the reason for this exclusion may have been the likely dual authorship, though it was believed that Henry VIII was coauthored by John Fletcher, and yet it appears in the First Folio. The mystery remains unsolved.

The First Folio contained eighteen plays which had never been previously published. These eighteen plays included: All's Well That Ends Well; Antony and Cleopatra; As You Like It; The Comedy of Errors; Coriolanus; Cymbeline; Henry VI, Part One; Henry VIII; Julius Caesar; King John; Macbeth; Measure for Measure; The Taming of the Shrew; The Tempest; Timon of Athens; Twelfth Night; Two Gentlemen of Verona; and The Winter's Tale. These plays were presumably printed from some type of authoritative manuscript, or unpublished original copy. The other eighteen plays which appeared in the First Folio had been published before, in what is known as a quarto edition. (The word ''quarto'' refers to a book made up of sheets of paper folded twice to form four leaves of equal size, or eight pages.) Scholars have distinguished the quarto editions of these plays as being either good quartos or bad quartos. A good quarto was one which was printed from an authoritative, reliable manuscript. Bad quartos were those which contained textual inaccuracies, such as unintelligible language, omissions, repeated lines, inaccurate speech headings, and other types of defects. Shakespearean scholars attribute these types of problems to a couple of possible causes. One theory is that the text of bad quartos was based on the memory of an actor or group of actors who had performed in the play. Another theory is that the text was composed by people who wrote down the play, or transcribed it, as it was being performed. When the First Folio was compiled, it is believed that quarto editions of the plays were in some cases reprinted with a few minor modifications. In other cases the quartos were revised using some form of authoritative manuscript, for example, Shakespeare's original manuscript (often referred to as the "foul papers") or a prompt book, or version of the play used by the actors. (Prompt books were usually transcribed from a playwright's foul papers.)

The second collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, or the Second Folio, was published in 1632. It is primarily a reprint of the First Folio, but a number of changes were made in order to modernize spelling and correct stage directions and names. The Third Folio was published in 1663 and it contained corrections to the text of the Second Folio but also introduced errors not found in earlier editions. The Third Folio was reprinted in 1664 and included seven new plays. One of these plays, Pericles, is generally accepted as Shakespeare's work (though some believe another dramatist may have collaborated). The other six plays were not considered by later editors to be Shakespeare's. A Fourth Folio was published in 1685 and was the last of the folio editions of the plays. This edition introduced new errors as well as some modernization of the text.

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