SHAKSPER 2001: First Folio at the Globe

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@ws.bowiestate.edu)
Date: 09/12/01 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.2154  Wednesday, 12 September 2001

From:           Karen Peterson-Kranz <kpetersonkranz@yahoo.com>
Date:           Tuesday, 11 Sep 2001 03:56:22 -0700 (PDT)
Subject:        First Folio at the Globe

From today's Guardian:

Shakespeare first folio takes stage at Globe
Maev Kennedy, arts and heritage correspondent
Tuesday September 11, 2001
The Guardian

One of the most perfect surviving copies of the first folio edition of
Shakespeare's plays, which could fetch up to £2.1m when auctioned in New
York, made a brief appearance on stage at the Globe Theatre in London
yesterday.

The first folio, printed in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death,
has been described as "imcomparably the most important work in the
English language". The book on display yesterday is one of only six
copies in private hands. It will be sold with three later editions at an
auction of the extraordinary English literature library built up by Abel
Berland, an American collector who made his fortune in real estate.

The sale of rare books will include one of four surviving copies of the
earliest edition of William Blake's Songs of Innocence, and a
manuscript, in Keats' hand, of one of his earliest poems, On Hope.
Either of these would be stars of any regular book sale, but they are
eclipsed by the first folio.

The first folio was published by Isaac Haggard and Edward Blount, two
actors from the King's Men, the company for which Shakespeare wrote most
of his plays.  It was the first collection of a contemporary
playwright's works ever published, athough Ben Jonson had gathered
together some of his plays and poems and published them himself - to
much mockery.

Shakespeare's work was advertised as "published according to the True
Originall Copies" collected from actors and managers, and all now lost.
It contains more than half his known plays, including The Tempest, The
Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer
Night's Dream, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and Macbeth.

"It's an awesome thought that if this book had not been published, most
of what we know of Shakespeare would have disappeared from the world,"
Patrick Spottiswoode, education officer at the Globe, said.  "None of
the cue copies and prompt copies survives."

The book was owned by descendants of the poet John Dryden for centuries,
until it was sold at Sotheby's in 1913, and was then in the hands of
American collectors and dealers for most of the 20th century.  Mr
Berland bought it from the famous New York dealer John Fleming in 1971.

Christie's, which is auctioning the work in October in New York, said
the last first folio sold, 10 years ago and in a later binding, went for
£1.4m.

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