Professor Emma Smith, Hertford College, Oxford

Published 2023

First Folios Compared offers two routes into the documents: 

1. The chance to choose your favourite First Folio for reading and research, from copies held across the globe.

We don’t often compare the same book in different copies. These digital facsimiles are surprisingly different colours (due partly to the ageing of the linen paper in different conditions, and partly to the different conditions of photography to create the facsimile). They have a range of resolutions and reproduce copies that are variously clean (sometimes washed), trimmed, annotated, grubby, stained, incomplete or torn. The most widely known print facsimile, produced by Charlton Hinman as the Norton Facsimile of the First Folio of Shakespeare in 1968, selected preferred pages from a score of copies to produce a perfect, but non-existent, facsimile.

2. The opportunity to compare the copies to trace corrections, printing-house practices, and evidence of later reception, including ownership, marginalia and emendations.

Although (or perhaps because) Shakespeare’s First Folio is probably the world’s most famous – and studied – secular book, there is still a real opportunity to make discoveries about individual copies. More people have looked in awe at these copies as high-value objects kept for senior researchers or behind glass for museum-style viewing, than have actually turned each page looking for details. First Folios Compared allows you to do this, at scale, for the first time. 

Here are some areas to get started with when looking to compare the First Folios:

The engraving by Martin Droeshout on the title-page of the book also exists in different states. See this blog by Sarah Werner for how to spot the difference.

Marks of use can show us how the book has been used in different contexts. Leafing through a copy may show lots of unmarked pages, but do persevere, since most copies have intermittent rather than consistent signs of reading.

Even if marks are not verbal, the quantity of dirt, spills and smears, or of paper repairs (usually visible as a patch of different-coloured paper) can give a sense of which plays were most often read.

The preliminary pages, before the plays begin, are one of the most vulnerable sections of the text and are often replaced by facsimiles of varying quality. They also tend to be bound in different orders, creating a different introduction to the book.

Names and bookplates can be investigated to extend the provenance history for different volumes. There’s lots still to find out.