In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, former colleagues of William Shakespeare in the King’s Men theatre company, gathered 36 of his plays into a single volume. Known as the First Folio, it was the first collection of its kind and became a crucial record of Shakespeare’s work.
Eighteen of the plays had never been printed before and could have disappeared without the collection. They included Macbeth, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar and As You Like It. The book was titled Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies and divided its contents into those three categories.
The name “folio” refers to the book’s format: each sheet of paper was folded once, producing a large volume. Its title page featured a portrait of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout, described in the source as the only portrait considered to represent him faithfully.
At the time, plays were generally written for performance rather than publication. Theatre companies often kept the manuscripts they used to prepare productions. Some of Shakespeare’s works had been printed separately in smaller books known as quartos, but those editions could contain changes, missing passages or incomplete versions.
After Shakespeare died in 1616, Heminges and Condell drew on manuscripts and documents held in the King’s Men archives, as well as existing printed editions, to assemble the collection.
An estimated 750 copies of the First Folio were printed, and around 235 have been located. Their scarcity has attracted strong interest from collectors. One copy sold at auction in October 2020 for $9,978,000, while another fetched $6.6 million in 2001.
Sources: elDiario.es.