Second Folio

Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies
Title page of the second folio (1632), this copy with a certificate of a censor for the Inquisition.
Author	William Shakespeare
Cover artist	Martin Droeshout
Country	England
Language	Early Modern English
Genre	English Renaissance theatre
Publisher	Thomas Cotes
Publication date	1632

Second Folio is the term applied to the 1632 edition of the collected plays of William Shakespeare, following upon the First Folio of 1623.

Much language was updated; there are almost 1,700 changes from the First Folio.

The major partners in the First Folio had passed from the publishing scene by the time of the Second Folio: William Jaggard—official printer to the city of London (17 December 1610)—had died in 1623, and his son Isaac died in 1627.^[1] Edward Blount, the third major partner, had sold his rights to Shakespearean plays to Robert Allot in 1630, and then died in 1632. Allot thus became the prime mover in the creation of the Second Folio. The two minor partners in the First Folio, William Aspley and John Smethwick, continued as partners in the Second Folio syndicate; Aspley owned the rights to Much Ado About Nothing and Henry IV, Part 2, while Smethwick owned the rights to Love's Labour's Lost, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and The Taming of the Shrew. Allot, Aspley, and Smethwick were joined by two other publishers: Richard Hawkins and Richard Meighen.^[2] (Hawkins owned the rights to Othello, while Meighen owned the rights to The Merry Wives of Windsor.)

The printing of the Second Folio was done by Thomas Cotes. Individual copies of the Second Folio were issued with title-page inscriptions to each of the five publishers, in the format "printed by Thomas Cotes for Robert Allot," "...for William Aspley," etc. It appears that each of the booksellers in the syndicate took a specific consignment of the press run to sell at his shop, the size of the consignment depending upon his level of participation in the project. In all copies, though, a colophon at the end of the book gives the full list of publishers. By one account, the surviving volumes of the Second Folio inscribed for Robert Allot outnumber those for the other four publishers taken altogether, by about two to one — a fact that reflects Allot's dominance in the endeavour.^[3] The Hawkins imprint is "exceedingly rare," and "Not more than three or four copies are known with the Smethwick imprint...."^[4] Though all copies of the Second Folio are dated 1632, some in fact are remainder issues that were released as late as 1641 and after.^[5]

King Charles I owned a copy of the Second Folio, which became part of the library of Windsor Castle; Charles II's copy is in the British Museum. The so-called Perkins Folio, which John Payne Collier used for his forged emendations of Shakespeare's text, was a copy of the Second Folio.^[6]

References

↑ “Jaggard, William (c.1568–1623),” Stanley Wells in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, eee ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: OUP, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, 2004, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/37592 (accessed January 19, 2016).
↑ F. E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964, Baltimore, Penguin, 1964; pp. 39, 169-71, 458.
↑ Andrew Murphy, ed., Shakespeare in Print: A History and Chronology of Shakespeare Publishing, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003; p. 52.
↑ Frank Karslake, Book Auction Records, London, William Dawson, 1903; p. 355.
↑ William Todd, "The Issues and States of the Second Folio and Milton's Epitaph," Studies in Bibliography 5 (1953), pp. 81-108.
↑ Sidney Lee, A Life of William Shakespeare, London, Mcamillan, 1898; p. 312.

External links

Second Folio– Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University
The Second Folio (brief description, part of TCU's Shakespeare Treasures).
What is the Second Folio of William Shakespeare? in the Meisei University Shakespeare Collection Database.

William Shakespeare

Plays

Tragedies	Antony and Cleopatra Coriolanus Hamlet Julius Caesar King Lear Macbeth Othello Romeo and Juliet Sir Thomas More* Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Troilus and Cressida

Comedies	All's Well That Ends Well As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Cymbeline Love's Labour's Lost Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Night's Dream Much Ado About Nothing Pericles, Prince of Tyre* The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Twelfth Night The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Two Noble Kinsmen* The Winter's Tale Cardenio* Love's Labour's Won

Histories	King John Edward III* Richard II 1 Henry IV 2 Henry IV Henry V 1 Henry VI* 2 Henry VI* 3 Henry VI* Richard III Henry VIII*

See also	Problem plays Late romances Characters A–K L–Z Chronology Performances Settings Quarto publications First Folio Second Folio

Poems

Life
and works

Legacy

* Shakespeare and other authors
Lost

Early editions of William Shakespeare's works

Folios and quartos	Foul papers List of Shakespeare plays in quarto Quarto Folio Bad quarto First Quarto First Folio Second Folio False Folio

Early editors	John Heminges Henry Condell Edward Knight

Publishers	Robert Allot William Aspley John Benson Edward Blount Cuthbert Burby Nathaniel Butter Philip Chetwinde Richard Hawkins Henry Herringman William Leake Richard Meighen Thomas Millington Thomas Pavier John Smethwick Thomas Thorpe Thomas Walkley John Waterson Andrew Wise

Printers	Edward Allde Thomas Cotes Thomas Creede George Eld Richard Field William Jaggard Augustine Matthews Nicholas Okes James Roberts Peter Short Valentine Simmes William Stansby

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