Shakespeare’s First Folio
London: Jaggard and Blount, 1623
In 1779 Edward Capell, a pioneering editor of Shakespeare, donated the 256 volumes of his Shakespeare collection. This included all four Folios, and fifty-one of the quarto plays besides the poems, and early editions of Chaucer, Spenser, and other English poets included for the light they shed on Shakespeare.
This is the title page of one of the First Folios, printed in London in 1623. This edition of Shakespeare’s comedies, histories and tragedies was the first collected edition, and twenty of the plays appeared there for the first time. The facing page has a poem by Ben Johnson
Capell A.3
