The 1623 Folio and Collection(s): Beyond Shakespeare: Introduction

MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARES COMEDIES, HISTORIES, & TRAGEDIES (1623) opens with a poem by Ben Jonson and a portrait by Martin Droeshout that, in tandem, establish the book as a proxy for the man himself. The "Booke, " notes Jonson, is better than Droeshout's "Picture" at measuring "the life, " despite the engraving's purported accuracy. The conceptual consolidation of playwright and book effected by the volume's first opening is among the most persuasive acts of English book design in the handpress era. The invitation to conflate the textual corpus with a fulsome image of the person who generated the playtexts collected to form it has been repeatedly taken up and endures: Shakespeare is the book, the book is Shakespeare. The Folio's self-proclaimed status as a proxy for "Shakespeare" (the man, his creative output, and the idea of his genius) has long made it a coveted item among private book collectors and a showpiece in institutional collections. A copy coming up for public sale still makes headlines. For instance, when a 1623 Folio was advertised for sale alongside copies of the Second, Third, and Fourth Folios in early 2023, an article in The Times declared, "it's more Bard than you can shake a spear at." Indeed, the 2023 anniversary of the first time Shakespeare's plays were collected and published together in folio format is unfolding like a recapitulation of the quatercentenary of his death in 2016, a year in which the 1623 Folio was mobilized in academic, theatrical, civic, and various other cultural contexts as bibliographic shorthand for Shakespeare's life. That many of the 2023 celebrations were timed to coincide with Shakespeare's birthday in April, rather than in November to mark the month of the Folio 's publication, only underscores the enduring emphasis on Shakespeare over other conversations the book can inspire.