Shakespeare, William.

Folio (340 x 219 mm.), 3 parts in 1 volume, 514 leaves, the third collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, second issue with the 1664 title and seven additional plays added at the end, engraved portrait of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout (printed on A1v, with Ben Jonson's verses on the portrait below), woodcut head-pieces and initials, text in double column, nineteenth-century red morocco richly decorated in gilt by Francis Bedford, all edges gilt, preserved in matching red cloth chemise and full red morocco pull-off case, neatly repaired tears at inner margin of portrait leaf, last leaf of A Winter's Tale supplied from another copy (inlaid to size), some neat restorations of a few of the lower corners and outer margins (Henry IV Part 2, with no apparent loss of text)



Collation: πA^{4 (±A1 and A2) [A3 incorrectly signed A2] b6 A-2A6 2B8 2C-4D6 4E4 a6 b4 *-4*4 ¶A-¶B6 ¶C-¶F4 ¶G6}

Thomas Gaisford, Dean of Christ Church, bookplate, sale, Sotheby's, 23 April 1890; John William Pease, Pendower Library, letters to him by Bernard Quaritch dated 30th April and 2nd May 1890 regarding the sale of this volume laid in; Howard Pease, bookplate (and note on front endpaper recording gift to him from J.B. Pease of Wardington Manor following the distribution of John William Pease's library in 1921); William E. Stockhausen, his sale, Parke-Bernet, 19-20 November 1974, lot 400; bought by Seven Gables Bookshop acting on commission for Victor E. and Irene Murr Jacobs; their sale, Sotheby's New York, 29 October 1996, lot 421

Greg volume III, pp.1118-1119; Wing S2914; Bartlett 122; Pforzheimer 909

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing, where appropriate
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

The third folio edition (second, enlarged issue) of Shakespeare's plays, generally regarded as the rarest of the seventeenth-century folio editions. An unknown number of copies is thought to have been destroyed in the Great Fire of London of 1666.

The third folio is a page-for-page reprint of the second edition (1632), but also contains seven added plays, of which only Pericles is authentic. The first issue - of which few copies survive - appeared without the added plays (the text ending on Eeee4, after Cymbeline), usually with the Droeshout portrait on the title page (as in the First and second folios of 1623 and 1632) and with the portrait verses by Ben Jonson on the verso of the first leaf. For this, the second issue, the first two leaves were cancelled and replaced by a conjugate pair, with the portrait above Jonson's verses on the first verso, facing the title-page with its new enumeration of the seven added plays. These plays, "never before Printed in Folio", were added on eleven supplementary gatherings. Apart from the first of these, Pericles, the others are apocryphal, being set from older quartos where they had been ascribed to Shakespeare or "W.S.". They are The London Prodigall, The History of Thomas Lord Cromwell, Sir John Oldcastle, The Puritan Widow and The Tragedy of Locrine. As noted by Greg, the supplementary sheet ¶A2.5 was misimposed; in correctly bound copies, as here, the sheet was torn in half, and bound-in as two singletons, the deckle-edges inward.

Mary Allot, the widow of Robert Allot, the publisher of the second folio, had originally been forced to relinquish her husband's copyrights before she married out of the Stationers' Company. However, her new husband, the clothworker Philip Chetwind, later contested the assignment, alleging misrepresentation on the part of Legatt and Crooke. He subsequently recovered the copyrights on her behalf. His name alone (or rather his initials) appears on the title pages of the two issues, but in fact other proprietors included Eleanor Cotes, Miles Flesher, William Leake, John Martin, Gabriel Bedell, Thomas Collins and Alice Warren.