Shakespeare’s First Folio: Three New Publications

• Ann Thompson

Published to mark four hundred years since Shakespeare’s death, Emma Smith’s two monographs on the First Folio complement each other: The Making of Shakespeare’s First Folio analyses the protracted process by which the book came into existence, the various agents who contributed to its production and the contingencies and obstacle that had to be dealt with along the way. Four Centuries of an Iconic Book, on the other hand, offers a “biography” of the book over the next 400 years by examining how owners, readers, collectors, librarians, actors, scholars, and even forgers and thieves have interacted with it. The Cambridge Companion consists of twelve essays by different authors covering much the same topics as the monographs.