William Shakespeare | Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, London, 1632, THE SECOND FOLIO

William Shakespeare

Mr William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. Published according to the true originall copies. The Second Impression. London: Tho[mas]. Cotes for Allot, 1632

SECOND COLLECTED EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS, folio (322 x 212mm.), COLLATION (of complete copy): πA6 *4 , A-2B6 2C2, a-y6, 2a-3c6 3d4, woodcut head-pieces and initials, text in double column, 66 lines, roman and italic type, headlines and catchword, Todd's state Ib of "Effigies" page (A5), seventeenth century blind-panelled calf, expertly rebacked, spine with raised bands in seven elaborately gilt compartments, red morocco label to second compartment, housed in modern red half-morocco box, first 2 leaves ("To the Reader" and title) and the last leaf lacking and supplied in facsimile, D1 and quires I and II probably supplied from another copy, D2, f6 and OO6 each with a small hole affecting 2 or 3 letters, rust-hole to s2 (with loss to a word), 100mm. closed tear to lower margin of ss5, ddd2 and ddd2 with repairs at margins (affecting several words), marginal repairs to six leaves, small stains to 6 leaves partially obscuring a few letters, scattered staining throughout

THE SECOND FOLIO EDITION OF THE MOST IMPORTANT WORK IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, ALSO CONTAINING THE FIRST APPEARANCE IN PRINT OF JOHN MILTON (an epitaph in 16 verses printed on recto of πA5). 

The second folio edition of Shakespeare's plays, which in principle was a page-for-page reprint of the First Folio of 1623, was printed in 1632 by Thomas Cotes, who had taken over the Jaggard shop following Isaac’s death in 1627. Like the First Folio it was printed for a syndicate of publishers, which again included John Smethwick and William Aspley. Although many obvious corrections were made, the printing introduced hundreds of minor changes to the text. 

This copy includes some fascinating annotations by an early reader (probably 1650s), most notably a lyric poem in three quatrains penned on the verso of the final leaf of The Winters Tale (Cc2):

"The tyme it was when heay was off grase

And gone meadowes greene,

[...]

But hee that writeth fast and faire

The belle away shall bearre."

This lyric includes references to writing and education ("I wish I had more learning got"), suggesting a young reader, probably an (older) schoolboy. Elsewhere, the verso of the final leaf of The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth (I1) is annotated in the same hand with "honorificabilitudinatibus", the longest word in Shakespeare's works, used to comic effect by Costard in Love's Labour's Lost. Perhaps this early reader found a humorous parallel between the pedantic schoolmaster Holofernes and his friend Sir Nathaniel—who have "lived long on the alms basket of words"—and their own educational experience.

A later owner was the Oxford literary scholar Colonel Cyril Hackett Wilkinson, who mentions his acquisition of this copy with pride in a 1956 article for The Book Collector:

"There are books—I have a few of them—for which any collection is the better...The Second Folio of Shakespeare, even with a facsimile title, and the 1647 Beaumont & Fletcher are not amiss" ("A Small Collection at Oxford", p. 133).

LITERATURE

Bartlett 120; Greg III, pp. 1113-1116; Pforzheimer 906; STC 22274; Todd, "The Issues and States of the Second Folio", Studies in Bibliography, 5 (1952-1953), pp. 81-108; Wilkinson, "Contemporary Collectors IX: A Small Collection at Oxford", The Book Collector, Summer 1956, pp. 127-136

PROVENANCE

Colonel Cyril Hackett Wilkinson (1888-1960), Vice Provost of Worcester College, Oxford, literary scholar, editor of the Clarendon Press edition of The Poems of Richard Lovelace, and dedicatee of J.R.R. Tolkien's Farmer Giles of Ham: armorial bookplate; Sotheby's London, 29 March 1961, lot 1177; Christie's, 5 December 1991, lot 325