[portrait-aspect] Poster:
In Commemoration of the 400th Anniversary of the Death of William Shakespeare
(April 23rd 1564 - April 23rd 1616)
We present original copies of two Shakespeare plays, taken from the Second Folio of 1632 and the Fourth Folio of 1685
Courtesy of the CSUEB Library Special Collections
[landscape-aspect] Poster:
In Commemoration of the 400th Anniversary of the Death of William Shakespeare
(April 23rd 1564 - April 23rd 1616)
We present original copies of two Shakespeare plays, taken from the Second Folio of 1632 and the Fourth Folio of 1685
Courtesy of the CSUEB Library Special Collections
Display card no. 1:
Twelfth Night, Or What You Will
London, 1632
Taken from the second folio of 1632.
The first folio (1623) and subsequent second folio (1632) present 36 of Shakespeare's plays, compiled by his fellow actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, including 18 plays that were published for the first time. The large folio format had usually been reserved for especially important or expensive volumes. During Shakespeare's lifetime, stage plays were not taken seriously enough as literature to be collected and published in folios.
Display card no. 2:
Measure for Measure
London, 1685
Taken from the second folio of 1685.
The third folio (1663), and fourth folio (1685), added seven more plays attributed to Shakespeare during his lifetime, however modern scholars only accept one of the seven additions as actually being authored by Shakespeare (Pericles). The text of the fourth folio would serve as basis for most future publications of the plays of William Shakespeare.
The first 1623 folio edition of Shakespeare’s work was compiled just seven years after his death by John Heminge and Henry Condell, Shakespeare’s friends and colleagues in his acting company the King's Men, in an effort to present definitive version of Shakespeare’s plays. Previously, the large folio format had been reserved only for prestigious or important volumes. Stage plays had not been considered as serious literature and had only been published in smaller, single-play editions. Of the 36 plays compiled in the first edition, 18 had never been published before in any form and others had been issued in smaller, sometimes pirated editions that varied drastically in their text. In the preface to the folio edition, Heminge and Condell state that Shakespeare’s writings "are now offer'd to your view cured, and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers as he conceived them." The first folio edition sold so well that it was followed by three more editions, each making changes and corrections to the text. These four folio editions would represent the first folio ever consisting only of an author’s plays and would serve as the basis for most future publications of Shakespeare’s work.
