Much ado about Shakespeare's first folio sale

1623 copy of the calf-bound First Folio edition of William Shakespeare's plays on display at Sotheby's auction house in London. Picture / Reuters

LONDON - Without it, we would know nothing of Shakespeare's Macbeth, Julius Caesar or The Taming of the Shrew.

The First Folio, the first edition of the Bard's complete collected works, is the most important text in English literature, gathered together within years of his death by actors eager to immortalise their late friend's genius.

So when Sotheby's announced yesterday that they are to sell one of the rare surviving editions, still in its mid-17th century calf binding, the excitement was palpable.

Conservatively priced at up to £3.5 million, ($9.9m) Stephen Roe, head of books and manuscripts, admitted they were "quietly hopeful" that it would break the previous record for a First Folio of more than US$6 million ($9.7m) set in New York four years ago.

The volume is one of only 228 to have survived from the original print run of 750 in 1623 and has been in the Dr Williams' Library in London for the last three centuries, providing the longest uninterrupted ownership of any of the copies still extant.

The library, established in the early 18th century under the will of Dr Daniel Williams, a leading dissenting minister, is selling to safeguard its future as the pre-eminent research library for English Protestant dissent.

Dr David Wykes, its director, said they had been proud to own such a remarkable book but it accounted for a third of their annual insurance bill and was so important as to be a security risk.

"Its sale will secure the finances of the library and safeguard our important historic collections of manuscripts and printed books for future generations," he said.

"This book has been called indisputably the most important book in English literature and the most important secular book of all time," English literature specialist Peter Selley said as the volume was put on show yesterday.

It was the most exciting item he had ever sold at auction, partly because relatively complete copies of the Folio in contemporary bindings hardly ever came on to the market.

"There is only one copy recorded as remaining in private hands [that sold by Oriel College, Oxford, to the late Sir Paul Getty in 2002]. This sale will be a truly exceptional event," he said.

Even the copies in the British Library have much later bindings than this one, which was apparently bound within decades of publication, during a period when the Puritans had banned all stage performances.

It would have been bought unbound originally for 15 to 20 shillings.

The First Folio contains 36 plays, 18 of which had not been previously printed in any form including A Winter's Tale, The Tempest, As You Like It, Coriolanus and Measure for Measure.

They could have been lost for all time but for the efforts of John Heminges and Henry Condell, Shakespeare's friends and fellow actors in the King's Men company to publish them at a time when collected editions were so uncommon that Ben Jonson was mocked for producing his.

Shakespeare himself made no effort to have his plays published before his death in 1616, aged 52, and no contemporary manuscripts of his plays survive, with the possible exception of two pages of his collaboration on the play Sir Thomas More.

This First Folio contains extensive markings and annotations from its early owner, who shows great excitement at some speeches which are famous today, such as Hamlet's "To be or not to be..." soliloquy.

But the work which most interested this unknown reader, provoking more than 300 notes, was Henry VIII, which is less well-known today and was partially in the hand of another playwright, John Fletcher.

Sotheby's is mounting a dedicated Age of Shakespeare exhibition with the First Folio as its star exhibit which will tour the world prior to sale in London on 13 July.

Asked whether it would be a sad loss were it to be sold overseas, Dr Roe insisted not.

"It's world literature," he said.

"It's not just for the UK."

The First Folio of Shakespeare was "a volume that has galvanised and changed the world," he added.

- INDEPENDENT