Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies | 1632, The Second Folio, first issue, 17th century binding

William Shakespeare. Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. Published according to the true Originall Copies. The second Impression. London: Printed by Thomas Cotes for Robert Allot, 1632.

Second edition of Shakespeare’s collected plays, the true first issue of 1632, in a seventeenth-century binding. One of the great monuments of English literature and the second of only four seventeenth-century folio editions of Shakespeare.

Folio. Engraved portrait of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout on the title page; woodcut head- and tailpieces and initials throughout. Todd’s first issue, with the Effigies leaf in Smith’s state C. Seventeenth-century dark calf, rebacked with the original spine laid down, red morocco lettering-piece and professional leather restoration. Endpapers renewed. Housed in a custom folding case.

The Second Folio appeared only nine years after the First Folio of 1623 and reproduces that landmark edition essentially page for page, while introducing numerous textual revisions. Its publication confirmed the extraordinary success of the first collected Shakespeare and helped establish the plays as a permanent literary corpus rather than works dependent upon their continued life on the stage. The four great Folios of 1623, 1632, 1663 and 1685 subsequently became the principal vehicles through which Shakespeare’s collected dramatic works were preserved during the seventeenth century.

Like its predecessor, the Second Folio contains thirty-six plays divided into Comedies, Histories and Tragedies, including eighteen plays which had never appeared in print before their inclusion in the First Folio. Without the folio tradition, works including Macbeth, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar and As You Like It might otherwise have been lost.

The celebrated engraved portrait of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout appears on the title page. Droeshout’s image, first created for the 1623 Folio, became one of the defining likenesses of Shakespeare and is of particular importance because it was published within living memory of the playwright and with the approval of men who had known him. Ben Jonson’s accompanying verses famously direct the reader beyond the portrait itself and towards Shakespeare’s writing.

The Second Folio possesses an additional literary distinction of considerable importance: it contains the first appearance in print of John Milton.

Then only twenty-four years old, Milton contributed the anonymous sixteen-line poem “An Epitaph on the admirable Dramaticke Poet, W. Shakespeare”, beginning “What neede my Shakespeare for his honour’d bones”. Printed on the Effigies leaf, it was the first of Milton’s works to appear in print and creates a remarkable conjunction between two of the greatest figures in English literature within a single volume.

The present copy is the true first issue of the Second Folio. Bibliographer William B. Todd demonstrated that copies of this issue were printed and sold in 1632, with variant title pages naming the shareholders responsible for particular portions of the edition. Robert Allot, whose imprint appears here, held the largest interest.

After Allot’s death, his widow transferred his rights to John Legat the younger and Andrew Crooke the elder in 1637. Remaining sheets were subsequently issued around 1641 and later with newly set title and Effigies leaves, although these later issues continued to bear the date 1632. The original 1632 setting present here therefore distinguishes the book from those subsequent reissues.

The Effigies leaf is in Smith’s state C, with the characteristic initial “S” against a filigreed background, and belongs to Todd’s true first issue. Early-bound first-issue copies are particularly desirable: although the Second Folio survives in greater numbers than the First, examples retaining seventeenth-century bindings are now much more difficult to encounter.

The volume also preserves evidence of its early life as a working literary text. A short passage in Hamlet bears contemporary censorship, an evocative survival of an early reader’s engagement with Shakespeare. Such interventions have been left undisturbed as part of the history of the copy.

Condition: the seventeenth-century calf binding has been sympathetically rebacked, preserving the original spine, with further professional restoration to the leather. The title page is mounted and repaired, with minor loss affecting a small number of letters. The “To the Reader” leaf has been supplied from another first-issue copy and restored. A small number of leaves show paper flaws, marginal tears and occasional light staining. Contemporary censorship to a short passage in Hamlet. Overall a complete, sound and handsome example of the true 1632 issue.

The Second Folio occupies a singular position in collecting. It stands only one generation removed from the First Folio, preserves the same thirty-six-play Shakespeare canon, retains the great Droeshout image, and adds the first printed work of John Milton.

A substantial first-issue example in an early binding, bringing together Shakespeare’s collected theatre and the first appearance in print of the young Milton in one of the defining books of seventeenth-century England.

Greg III, 1113; Pforzheimer 906; STC 22274; W. B. Todd, “The Issues and States of the Second Folio and Milton’s Epitaph on Shakespeare”, Studies in Bibliography V (1952–53), pp. 81–108.