Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)
Mr. William Shakespear's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. Published according to the True Original Copies. Unto which is added, Seven Plays Never before Printed in Folio.

London: Printed for H. Herringman, and are to be sold by Joseph Knight & Francis Saunders, 1685.

Shakespeare's Fourth Folio, with full-page engraved author portrait by Martin Droeshout bound opposite the title (marginal restoration), bound in full blue straight-grain morocco tooled in blind and gilt featuring the arms of Henry Perkins on both boards, with his bookplate inside; ex libris T. Henry Foster, sold in his sale at Parke-Bernet 1 May 1957 as lot 524; subsequently purchased from Scribner's in 1968; issue with a cancel replacing the original title leaf pi2 with a different list of booksellers authorized to sell the volume chosen by Herringman; very nicely preserved, all edges gilt and gauffered, 14 3/16 x 9 1/8 in.

Shakespeare's Fourth Folio includes the forty-three plays printed in the Third, with obvious corrections made to the text. Herringman also printed folio-format editions of the works of Ben Jonson and Beaumont & Fletcher in this period, each with a slew of commendatory poems prefixed. When Nicholas Rowe resolved to edit Shakespeare's plays for his 1709 publication of the plays, he chose the Fourth Folio as the basis for his text, a tradition followed by subsequent editors, including Pope and Theobald. This particular copy, with distinguished provenance, is finely bound and beautifully preserved.

Wing S-2917; Pforzheimer 911; Greg III page 1121; ESTC R24524 locating nine institutional holdings of this issue in U.S. libraries.

From the Ken Rapoport Collection.