The First Folio

​This year marks the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.  History has left us a few scarce facts about the person we regard as the greatest playwright in the English language.  We   do know he died on April 23, 1616 in Stratford Upon Avon.
To mark the death of the playwright the Folger  Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. are sponsoring a tour of the First Folio to all fifty states.  In Wisconsin, the Chazen Museum in Madison Wisconsin was selected to display the First Folio from November 3 to December 11th.  During that time a host of events have been scheduled to teach about the importance of the First Folio to our culture.
I have been fortunate to attend four separate events, attend a docent tour of the Folio and the Chazen Museum and a performance of the Madison Shakespeare Company.
My first impression was that it was simply a fluke of history that we have the First Folio.  When Shakespeare was writing copy right laws did not yet exist.  Here’s an interesting fact, Shakespeare did not own the plays he wrote.  The plays were actually owned by the theater company, The Lord Chamberlin’s Men, that he was a partner in.  In 1603 King James I offered the company a patent and from that time on were called King’s Men.
In the United States the Folger Shakespeare Museum was started by Henry Folger and his wife, Emily.  Henry was CEO of Standard Oil Company and had enormous personal wealth.  The Folger’s didn’t have children but they had two passions, running Standard Oil and collecting Shakespeare Folio’s.  Frankly, Henry was obsessive.  The Library owns 82 copies of the 1623 First Folio.  While Folger spent a lifetime collecting he didn’t live long enough to see his Library finished.  His wife took on that role after his death.
Publishing plays was not common during Shakespeare’s career.  The purpose was performance, not creating a written legacy.  Two fellow actors and partners in The King’s Men performance company, John Heminges and Hendy Condell collected thirty-six of the plays, classified them by type and had them printed them in one volume seven years after Shakespeare’s death.  It is clear that following Shakespeare’s death there was no rush to have his work published.
My second impression was why it took so long to have the plays published.  I wonder what the motivation was to publish the plays when they did.  The King had extended the acting company a royal patent so obviously they had the right to publish at any time.  My guess, as a historical fiction writer, is that it took seven years to collect the various versions of the plays.  We also know that the 36 plays in the First Folio do not include:  Pericles;  Prince of Tyre; The Two Noble Kinsman; and the two lost plays –
Cardenio and Love’s Labour Won.  I wonder why three of the known plays were not included in the First Folio, it would only be conjecture.
The Chazen has the First Folio on display in a dimly lit room on the third floor.  The Folio is rests in a pedestal encased in ¾ inch glass surrounded by a motion security system with a guard from the UW-Madison Security staff.  The 630 page book is open to Hamlet and the “To be or not to be’ soliloquy.  It is humbling to read the words from the first printed version of the play.
My final impression was that the Folio is a book.  The plays are not printed in a way that would lend them to use in a stage production.  It is abundantly clear that the First Folio was intended as a Legacy work, to ensure that posterity had the plays.  Words are how we define ourselves and books provide a method to record words for eternity.  Printed books may not always be the medium, however, as human’s we must save what we create to the benefit of future generations.  We owe a debt of extreme gratitude to Heminges and Condell.  How tenuous history can be.