![]() ![]() Of the 230-some First Folios that survive, the bulk are in library or university collections – with the Folger Shakespeare Library, Tokyo’s Meisei University, the New York Public Library, the British Library the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, the University of Texas at Austin and Princeton among those holding multiple copies. The now familiar portrait of the author also contributed to the perceived weightiness of the tome. They categorized the plays as comedies, tragedies, or histories, forever cementing our conceptions of the individual works. Their labors yielded some 750 copies of a luxurious, high-priced volume, which positioned Shakespeare as someone of such consequence, his words were to be accorded the same reverence as that of classical authors’. ![]() Hemings and Condell’s desire to create an accurate compendium of Shakespeare’s work for posterity led them to scour prompt books, authorial fair copy, and working drafts referred to as “foul papers” – a term rife for revival, in our opinion – for the texts of the unpublished works. You may be able to imagine a world without Cymbeline or Timon of Athens, but what about Macbeth or The Tempest? ![]()
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