2023 is the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio:
“Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies.”
Ten curiosities of the 1623 First Folio
The First Folio engraving, supposedly of Shakespeare, has numerous anomalies compared to other author portraits, many of which can only be deliberate, though they look like errors. All this artist’s other portraits, even from that year, are very skilled.
Ben Jonson’s poem opposite the portrait—itself another anomalous aspect of the Folio—draws attention to the inadequacy of the portrait and says the author is not to be found in it.
The First Folio obliquely links the author Shakespeare to Stratford-upon-Avon (which is the first time this connection was made): the references to “Avon” and “Stratford” are in separate poems five pages apart.
Ben Jonson’s commendatory poem in the First Folio is addressed, in emphatically larger type, to “The AUTHOR Mr. William Shakespeare.” Why this emphasis?
Jonson’s eulogy includes a sixteen-line preamble that speaks of those who might approach the book with “seeliest ignorance,” “blind affection,” or “crafty malice.”
In mentioning Chaucer, Spenser, and Beaumont in association with “monument” and “tomb,” the eulogy draws attention to the fact that Shakespeare is not buried alongside these great poets—where he deserves to be—in Westminster Abbey.
Jonson writes, “Thou art a monument without a tomb,” even though there is both a monument and a tomb in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Though the First Folio prefatory material suggests that the King’s Men shareholders Hemmings and Condell compiled the First Folio, it seems to have been compiled and edited by Ben Jonson.
A letter in the prefatory material from Hemmings and Condell reveals they received unusually “blotless” manuscripts, claiming it as a mark of Shakespeare’s genius. Jonson mocks the players for this in his private notebook.
Scholars compiling the New Oxford Shakespeare claim that up to a third of the plays contained in the First Folio are co-authored, and some plays have whole scenes or even acts written by others. Yet they are all categorised as “Shakespeare.”