Shakespeare, Hamlet
Shakespeare, Othello
Letter about Guy Fawkes
Newsbook
Shakespeare, King Lear
English arrives in North America
Shakespeare's Sonnets
King James Bible
Webster, The Duchess of Malfi
First English dictionary
The Globe Theatre
Shakespeare's First Folio
John Donne, Poetry
Jonson, The English Grammar
Areopagitica by John Milton
Confessions of Charles I's executioner
Advert for a quack doctor
Marvell, 'An Horatian Ode'
Early A - Z of London
Samuel Pepys' Diary
Theatrical figures
Coffee houses
A cure for the Plague
The Fire of London
John Milton's Paradise Lost
Criminal slang
Aphra Behn, The Rover
Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress
Habeas Corpus Act
Advert for a Rhinoceros
Account of a shipwreck
This is the first collected edition of the Shakespeare's plays, published in 1623, only 7 years after the playwright’s death. It is known as the 'First Folio'. The word ‘folio’ comes from the Latin for a leaf, and usually means a leaf in a manuscript. But in printers’ jargon it had another sense: it referred to page size. It was two of Shakespeare's fellow actors and closest friends, John Heminge and Henry Condell, who undertook the work of editing the text and supervising the printing.
None of Shakespeare's manuscripts survive, so the printed texts of his plays are our only source for what he originally wrote. The quarto editions are the texts closest to Shakespeare's time. Some are thought to preserve either his working drafts or his finished 'fair copies'. Others are thought to record versions remembered by actors who performed the plays in Shakespeare's day.
William Shakespeare began his career as an actor and playwright around 1592, not long after the first public playhouses were opened in London. He belonged to The Chamberlain's Men, a company of actors who performed in the Globe, an open-air playhouse built on the south bank of the Thames in 1599. Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays, many of which were very successful both at court and in the public playhouses.
Shelfmark: G.11631.