Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies

In the early 17th century, publication in folio format using paper of unusually high quality was customarily reserved for Bibles. Folio publication was expensive, an ostentatious signal of distinction. Only Shakespeare’s contemporary and erstwhile rival, Ben Jonson, had published his poetry and plays as a monumental, folio-sized volume. As Professor James Shapiro of Columbia University notes, “at the time no English playwright had ever been posthumously honored with such a collection.”



That changed with Shakespeare and the First Folio. John Heminge and Henry Condell codified Shakespeare’s plays by genre, marking the first time his plays were categorized as Comedies, Histories, or Tragedies. Not included in the contents, but squeezed in between the Histories and Tragedies sections, is Troilus and Cressida— in most but not all copies. Three copies of the First Folio exist without this play, suggesting that negotiations for the right to include it continued well into the book’s production.