Is this a First Folio I see before me? William Shakespeare’s four centuries in print, preserving plays ‘For All Time’

To mark 400 years since The Bard’s First Folio was published, making literature out of drama, Troy Bramston talks to John Bell and Professor Emma Smith about the book that changed the world.

A first Folio edition of William Shakespeare plays dated 1623 and considered to be one of the most important books in English literature.

When the First Folio of William Shakespeare’s plays went on sale in November 1623, it was seven years after the master playwright and poet had died. It collected and published 36 of his plays, only half of which had been published in quarto during his lifetime. It is estimated that 750 copies were printed.

Four hundred years later, few could have imagined that any of the surviving 235 First Folios would be one of the most valuable books ever published. It is prized by institutions and, increasingly, private collectors. A First Folio at the State Library of NSW has an estimated value of about $15m.

The First Folio was titled: Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, published “according to the True Originall Copies” and printed in London by William and Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, with an engraved portrait of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout. But it is more than just a book. As Ben Jonson, who wrote the preface, argued: “He was not of an age, but for all time!”

William Shakespeare (1564-1616).

John Bell has been the leading actor, director and producer of Shakespeare’s plays in Australia. He fell in love with Shakespeare while in high school, began performing his plays regularly at Sydney University and later joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. He established Bell Shakespeare in 1990.

“It was a combination of the language, which really excited me and intrigued me, and the great stories that he tells,” Bell tells Review. “You go from a comedy like A Midsummer Night’s Dream to a tragedy like Macbeth to a history play like Henry IV. The range of his interests is extraordinary and they are all different worlds that he creates.”

“He is still the most performed playwright in the world, and in over 60 languages. Movies are being made of the plays, and TV series, so it is not just the live theatre; it keeps being adapted to other media.”

Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford and author of several Shakespeare books, including Shakespeare’s First Folio (Oxford University Press). For Smith, the significance of the First Folio is that it elevated the plays into literature.

“The main significance is turning drama, which was a low status and ephemeral entertainment medium, into this rather serious, almost Bible-type print,” Smith says. “We’re talking about a big serious-looking book in a format that was more associated with atlases, legal books, Bibles and not with the throwaway culture of the theatre.”

Many owners of the First Folio were middle- and upper-class professionals – merchants, property owners, lawyers, clergy – living comfortable lives with disposable income.

A bound edition sold for £1 in 1623 – about $400 today – which was the equivalent of seeing a Shakespeare play about 40 times. It was a book for enthusiasts. But few saw its value then. Surviving copies often have annotations, corrections, doodles and even wine goblet stains.

“It was a book to be used at the time,” Smith explains. “And probably it was a book to be used for the first 130 or 140 years of its life. In fact, we are talking about the First Folio of 1623, but there was a second edition in 1632 and a third in 1664.”

“So there’s a real paradox about the First Folios that for that first century or more, they’re full of life; they’re full of signs of people using them. And for the last century, more or less, we have kept them very much in glass cases.”

Actors Henry Condell and John Heminge, friends of Shakespeare, collected his plays for publication. Without their efforts, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar and The Tempest are among the 18 plays that would have been lost. Plays co-written by Shakespeare – such as The Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles, Prince of Tyre – were not included in the First Folio.

Several known plays attributed or partly attributed to Shakespeare have not survived, such as The History of Cardenio, based on the story of Don Quixote, and Love’s Labour’s Won. Smith says Shakespeare is the authentic author of the First Folio plays and rejects conspiracy theories that some plays may have been ghostwritten. But some could have been collaborative efforts.

The Bard’s plays wrestle with themes that are universal. Whether it is love or hatred, joy or sorrow, ambition or regret, familial or friendly bonds, loyalty or betrayal, the plays are elemental and eternal. They illuminate life. It is why they can be staged again and again as they were or reinvented for different settings.

“He had a very acute understanding of human psychology and human behaviour,” Bell says. “He did cover an extraordinary range of emotions and impulses. People have said he is the world’s greatest psychologist, and I’d have to agree with that. But it is not because he studied psychology. He just watched and observed and listened to people.”

Shakespeare also provides instructions on leadership. Bell’s book, Some Achieve Greatness (Pantera Press), provides lessons in statecraft by studying plays such as Henry V, Richard III and Julius Caesar, where politics and power loom large with competing princes, plotting senators, ambitious courtiers, cruel underlings and inspiring kings.

John Bell has been the leading actor, director and producer of Shakespeare’s plays in Australia. Picture: John Feder/The Australian.

“There is a wide range of things we can learn about good leadership and bad leadership,” Bell suggests. “In Henry V, he does not live in an ivory tower, he walks among his troops. He knows them by name, he can speak to them in an inspirational way, he can explain his actions to them. He is a very articulate leader and a popular one. And quite unlike his father who kept his distance, Henry V does know the men that he has fighting for him.”

“On the other hand, you’ve got someone like Julius Caesar who is aloof, ambitious and unaware of his unpopularity. In that same play, you’ve got Brutus who is full of noble ideas but can’t admit when he is wrong. And Cassius, who is behaving out of envy and jealousy, which is not a good place to come from if you are planning a coup. And Mark Antony, who is a brilliant orator and can sway the crowd, but once he has the prize, he loses it through self-indulgence and laziness.”

King Lear, one of the hardest of Shakespeare’s plays to stage, is Bell’s favourite.

“It really goes as far as you can into human misery and grief and loss and cruelty and betrayal,” he explains. “It does explore just how corrupt and disastrous the world can be. It does not supply any kind of happy ending; there is no comfort at the end. And that’s what I admire about the play. It is totally true to its aims.”

The first Shakespeare play staged in Australia was Henry IV, in Sydney in April 1800.

But who were the people who went to see Shakespeare’s plays during his lifetime and what was it like to stand or sit in the playhouse of the Globe Theatre on the south bank of the Thames? (The recreated Globe in London offers a magnificent authentic theatre-going experience.)

“They were quite diverse, tending towards young rather than old, men rather than women, but quite a socioeconomic range,” Smith describes.

“They went to an event which could sometimes be quite raucous and had more of the energy that we might associate with stand-up comedy rather than with theatre today, which tends to be quite decorous and well-behaved.”

The First Folio does not provide much of an insight into Shakespeare himself. But are there clues to be found that speak to his character and values as much as his literary genius? His writings imply a broad-minded intelligence and empathy but there is scant evidence that illuminates the man beyond the page.

“Maybe the person, if we could ever discover him, was just quite ordinary,” Smith ponders.

Bell and Smith agree that Shakespeare would be delighted his plays are still being performed and studied more than 400 years after his death.

“He would be absolutely astonished,” Smith says. “It is interesting that it is in his sonnets that he talks most about how verse can last beyond almost anything. The sonnets are not part of the First Folio but the First Folio certainly proved that to be true. Memorable language outlasts all of us. So maybe that suggests he did have an ambition for this.”