Norton Facsimile of the First Folio of Shakespeare

This is a full-size, photographic facsimile of Shakespeare's First Folio. The First Folio was printed over a period of two years. Proofs were read and corrections were made as the printing proceeded. The uncorrected sheets were mixed in with the corrected ones, with the result that no extant Folio, of which there are approximately 230, shows the finally corrected state of every page, and no two Folios are identical. This edition shows pages from 29 of the most satisfactory copies of the 80 in the Folger Shakespeare Library. The introduction discusses the "authority" of the Folio version of each of the plays, explaining the principles and problems involved in the printing of the Folio, and the preparation of this facsimile edition. The appendix shows the "before and after" states of representative pages, and two original proof sheets. Peter Blayney, in his introduction, reconsiders Professor Hinman's findings in the light of new scholarship, as well as fresh discoveries about the First Folio in 1623. He concludes with a table identifying the order in which plays were set and the original compositors believed to have set each page. This facsimile edition also gives the Globe act-scene-line numbers for the first and last lines of the page. The book is slip-cased, with a ribbon marker.