The First Folio
Thanks to the work of scholars in different disciplines, we have now some extensive knowledge of the history of the First Folio’s creation – from compilation to printing – as well as the history of its reception soon after publication and in the almost 400 years since then.
The First Folio is not a particularly rare book when compared to other publications of the same period. There are a considerable number of copies in circulation and from time to time a new one is rediscovered in dusty shelves and forgotten chests in someone's attic. Its value and the reverence with which it is treated nowadays comes not from its rarity in numbers but from the cultural value it has achieved. As Emma Smith (2016, p. 25) points out, 'in economic terms the First Folio lost its immediate use-value by the late 17th century', but it has then acquired such a high symbolic worth that ‘Shakespeare’s own reputation can be mapped, economically and geographically, against the distribution of this book’ (p.34).
Some original surviving copies of the First Folio can be found, for example, in the British Library, at the Bodleian Library, in Oxford, and at the Meisei University, in Tokyo, Japan. The largest collection of First Folios is held at the Folger Library, in Washington, DC. Unfortunately, the University of Leicester Library Archives and Special Collections does not hold a copy of the First Folio, but visitors can peruse a facsimile which can be compared to an original copy of the Fourth Folio, published in 1685.
Saying that the publication of the First Folio was a defining moment in the history of English literature is - as grand as it may sound - an understatement. Without the First Folio, eighteen of Shakespeare' plays would be probably lost to us as they had not been previously published in quarto version. Among them are some of Shakespeare's most popular and often revived plays: Macbeth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Antony and Cleopatra and The Tempest. A reduced Shakespearean canon based only on unauthorized versions of the plays printed in low quality paper and in low numbers would have not only deprived us of some of his best pieces, but also profoundly distorted our knowledge of the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre and our appreciation of Shakespeare's dramatic genius.