Without the book, scholars say, plays including “Macbeth,” “The Tempest” and “Twelfth Night” might have been lost.
In the UK’s capital of London, a collection of the initial four volumes of William Shakespeare’s complete works is anticipated to fetch a price of up to 4.5 million pounds ($6 million) at an upcoming auction.
The renowned auction house, Sotheby’s, unveiled this news on the 461st birthday of Shakespeare. The auction is scheduled for May 23 and it will mark the first instance since 1989 that a compilation of the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Folios will be on offer as a single unit.
The auction house estimated the sale price at between 3.5 million and 4.5 million pounds.
Following Shakespeare’s passing in 1616, his plays were assembled into one book by his colleagues John Heminges and Henry Condell, who were both actors and stakeholders in the King’s Men, the troupe to which the playwright belonged.
The First Folio — fully titled “Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories & Tragedies” — contained 36 plays, of which half were published there for the first time. Without the book, scholars say, plays including “Macbeth,” “The Tempest” and “Twelfth Night” might have been lost. Sotheby’s called the volume “without question the most significant publication in the history of English literature.”
About 750 copies were printed in 1623, of which about 230 are known to survive. All but a few are in museums, universities or libraries. One of the few First Folios in private hands sold for $9.9 million at an auction in 2020.
The First Folio proved successful enough that an updated edition, the Second Folio, was published in 1632, a third in 1663 and a fourth in 1685.
Although the First Folio is regarded as the most valuable, the third is the rarest, with 182 copies known to survive. It is believed the third book’s rarity is because some of the stock was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.
The Third Folio included seven additional plays, but only one – “Pericles, Prince of Tyre” – is believed to be by Shakespeare.
