The Most Widely Printed Work of Shakespeare's Career
Here's something that surprises most people: Shakespeare's most printed work isn't Hamlet, isn't Romeo and Juliet, and isn't even a play you can watch on stage tonight. It's something far more humble in origin, yet absolutely essential to everything we know about the Bard. It's the book that saved half his plays from disappearing forever — and it's been reprinted more times than any other single work in English literature.
That book is the First Folio.
What Is the First Folio?
So, the First Folio is the first collected edition of William Shakespeare's plays, published in 1623 — seven years after his death. It was put together by two of his fellow actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, who wanted to preserve their friend's work for future generations.
Now, here's what makes it remarkable. Of the 38 plays we attribute to Shakespeare today, 18 of them had never been published in any form before the First Folio appeared. If Heminges and Condell hadn't done what they did, we would never have known plays like Macbeth, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Julius Caesar, and dozens of others. No quarto editions, no pamphlets, nothing. They'd simply be lost.
The First Folio isn't a single play — it's a collection of nearly all of Shakespeare's dramatic output, organized into comedies, histories, and tragedies. It's printed on folio-sized paper (hence the name), which was the largest and most prestigious format available in 17th-century England. The book contains about 900 pages and cost roughly £1 in 1623 — a significant sum, equivalent to a skilled craftsman's monthly wages That alone is useful..
Why "Folio" Matters
The size wasn't just about prestige. Folio format was typically reserved for serious works: Bibles, histories, legal texts. By printing Shakespeare's plays in folio, Heminges and Condell were making a statement: this was literature, not mere entertainment. They wanted Shakespeare taken seriously as a writer, and the physical form of the book was part of that argument.
Why It Matters
Here's the thing — without the First Folio, we'd only have about half of Shakespeare's plays. The other half survived only because two actors decided their friend's work was worth preserving.
Think about that for a second. Because of that, no First Folio means no Macbeth as we know it. Day to day, no Twelfth Night. In real terms, no The Tempest, which many scholars consider his greatest late work. The entire canon of Shakespeare — the most performed, most studied, most adapted body of work in the Western literary tradition — would be permanently incomplete.
But there's another reason the First Folio matters beyond pure survival. Some of Shakespeare's plays existed in earlier, inferior printings called "quartos" — some of them quite bad, possibly reconstructed from memory by actors or shorthand writers. Also, it's our most reliable text for many of the plays. The First Folio gave us cleaner, more authoritative versions of many of these texts Simple, but easy to overlook. Simple as that..
The Numbers Game
So why is it the "most widely printed"? Every time someone publishes a complete works of Shakespeare, they're essentially reprinting the First Folio (with corrections and scholarly additions, of course). On the flip side, simple: because it contains everything. Individual plays get printed in individual editions, but the complete collection — the Folio — gets reprinted over and over again by every major publisher, every university press, every literary imprint that wants a Shakespeare offering.
And yeah — that's actually more nuanced than it sounds Worth keeping that in mind..
Hamlet might be the most popular single play. Romeo and Juliet might sell more copies as a standalone book than any other individual Shakespeare text. But when you add up all the complete works, all the collected editions, all the scholarly reprints and facsimiles and modern typesets — the First Folio, in one form or another, wins by sheer volume. It's the one Shakespeare book that never goes out of print Easy to understand, harder to ignore..
How It Works — The Story Behind the Book
The First Folio didn't just appear out of nowhere. It emerged from a specific moment in theatrical history, and understanding that moment makes the book even more remarkable Easy to understand, harder to ignore. Which is the point..
The Actors' Motivation
Shakespeare died in 1616. In real terms, by 1623, the Lord Chamberlain's Men — the acting company he'd been part of for over two decades — had lost their star writer. They still performed his plays, but the texts were scattered: some in printed quartos, some only in manuscript, some in the actors' memories and personal papers Not complicated — just consistent. Worth knowing..
John Heminges and Henry Condell, both veteran members of the company, took it upon themselves to gather these texts and get them printed properly. They reached out to a London printer named William Stasians, who initially started the project but died before getting far. The work then passed to Isaac Jaggard, who completed it.
What Went Into It
The book wasn't just printed carelessly. Which means heminges and Condell wrote a dedicatory epistle and a poem praising Shakespeare, establishing the myth of the Bard that would grow over the centuries. They organized the plays into three categories — Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies — a classification system that's still used today.
The printing itself was a major undertaking. Folio books required large sheets of paper, specialized press work, and significant capital. And only about 750 copies were printed in the initial run, with perhaps 200-250 surviving today in whole or in part. First Folios are now among the most valuable books in the world; a pristine copy sold for $9.9 million in 2020.
The Second Folio and Beyond
The First Folio was so successful that a Second Folio followed in 1632, then a Third in 1663, and a Fourth in 1685. And each edition corrected some errors and introduced new ones. Scholars still argue about which readings from which folio represent Shakespeare's actual intentions.
But here's the key point: every subsequent collected edition of Shakespeare — every Complete Works, every Oxford Shakespeare, every Arden or Riverside or Cambridge edition — traces its lineage back to that first 1623 book. When publishers print Shakespeare's complete works today, they're building on the foundation Heminges and Condell laid.
Common Mistakes / What Most People Get Wrong
A few things get confused about the First Folio, and it's worth sorting them out.
Mistake #1: The First Folio is the only early Shakespeare book. It's not. Many of Shakespeare's plays were printed during his lifetime in smaller formats called "quartos." Some of these are quite good; others are terrible. The First Folio includes both the plays that had appeared in quartos (often in better versions) and the 18 plays that had never been printed before Still holds up..
Mistake #2: The First Folio is perfectly accurate. It absolutely is not. Printers made mistakes, compositors misread handwriting, and some of the underlying manuscripts were already corrupted. The First Folio is our most important Shakespeare text, but it's not scripture. Scholars spend careers comparing Folio readings to quarto readings and manuscript evidence to figure out what Shakespeare probably wrote And that's really what it comes down to..
Mistake #3: The First Folio contains everything Shakespeare wrote. It doesn't. Shakespeare wrote some poetry — notably Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece — that wasn't included. Some early plays that may have been collaborations are omitted or disputed. And the sonnets, though written during Shakespeare's lifetime, weren't included in the Folio either (they'd been published separately in 1609) That's the whole idea..
Practical Tips / What Actually Works
If you're interested in the First Folio — whether as a reader, a student, or just someone curious about literary history — here's how to approach it meaningfully.
Start with a modern complete works. You don't need to read the actual 1623 text (it's in Early Modern English, with different spelling and typography). Pick up a well-edited complete works — the Arden, Oxford, or Riverside editions are all excellent — and read with a good introduction that explains the Folio's significance The details matter here. Surprisingly effective..
Understand it's a starting point, not an endpoint. The First Folio is historically crucial, but it's not the final word. Modern scholarship has corrected many Folio errors and incorporated discoveries about theatrical practices, printing conventions, and authorship that weren't known in 1623.
Visit a Folio if you can. Several hundred copies survive, and many are on display in libraries and museums around the world. Seeing the actual book — the paper, the print, the dedicatory pages — gives you a physical connection to literary history that no digital scan can replicate.
Don't ignore the quartos. Some quarto versions of plays like Hamlet, Henry V, and Romeo and Juliet are dramatically different from the Folio versions. Reading both gives you a richer sense of how Shakespeare's texts evolved and how much we still don't know.
FAQ
Was the First Folio the first book of Shakespeare's plays? Yes, it was the first collected edition. Some individual plays had been printed before in quarto format, but the First Folio was the first time all (or nearly all) of Shakespeare's plays appeared together in one book.
How many copies of the First Folio exist today? Approximately 235 copies of the First Folio are known to survive, though some are incomplete. About 80 are in relatively good condition. They're housed in libraries and private collections around the world.
Why is the First Folio so valuable? Two reasons: rarity and importance. Only about 750 were printed originally, and 400 years of decay, fires, and neglect have taken their toll. Meanwhile, the book contains half of Shakespeare's dramatic output and is the foundation of all subsequent Shakespeare publishing.
Could Shakespeare have printed his own works? He didn't. Playwriting was considered a trade, not a literary profession, during Shakespeare's lifetime. Plays were owned by the acting companies, not the writers. Shakespeare apparently took little interest in publication, and the First Folio was produced after his death by his former colleagues Less friction, more output..
What's the difference between the First Folio and a modern Complete Works? Modern complete works use the Folio as a primary source but incorporate corrections, alternative readings from quartos, and scholarly emendations developed over four centuries. The basic content is the same, but the text has been refined.
The Bottom Line
The First Folio isn't just a book — it's a rescue mission that worked. Two actors loved their friend's work enough to preserve it, and because they did, we have the full Shakespeare. Every time a publisher prints a complete works, every time a student buys a collected edition, every time a theater company mounts a production of a play that only survived in that 1623 collection — they're participating in a chain of literary preservation that started nearly 400 years ago in a London printing house.
That's why it's the most widely printed work of Shakespeare's career. Not because it was the most popular in his lifetime, but because it's the one book that contains them all — and the one book we can't afford to lose And it works..
