Four hundred years ago, in 1623, a book of Shakespeare’s plays was published.
This wasn’t just any book: It marked the first time all of Shakespeare’s works were published together — no mean feat back in those days when many of his plays existed only in his drafts or the bits and pieces handed out to actors.
In fact, without this remarkable book, there would have been no published script for “Macbeth,” “Twelfth Night,” “Julius Caesar,” “The Tempest,” “Antony and Cleopatra” or “As You Like It,” just to name a few. Nearly half of Shakespeare’s output would have been lost.
And without his complete body of work to awe and inspire, Shakespeare likely would never have reached the cultural heights he has.
On Friday, Nov. 17, PBS’s “Great Performances” celebrates the 400th anniversary of the book in “Making Shakespeare: The First Folio.”
“The First Folio” is the name of this book of 36 plays. Well, actually, it’s not. The proper title is “Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies.” But it’s commonly called the First Folio by modern scholars; folio is a publishing term that indicates the way the book was printed, resulting in large-size pages.
Early in the program, narrated by Broadway superstar Audra McDonald, a participant describes the First Folio as “the most important secular book in the history of the Western world.”
Hyperbole? Well, the speaker is renowned Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate, so clearly, he has a bias toward its cultural significance. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t speaking accurately.
The First Folio is certainly the most expensive book going. In 2020, a copy auctioned by Christie’s sold for $10 million — the highest price ever paid for a work of literature at auction.
It’s estimated about 750 copies of the First Folio were printed. Today, 235 are known to still exist. PBS looks at a famously stolen copy, a recently discovered copy — in a public library in a small French town, no less — and a very royal copy.
In that latter segment, King Charles III examines a First Folio owned by his predecessor of some 15 generations, King Charles I, which is still in royal hands at Windsor Castle. That first Charles came to an unhappy end: His forces were defeated in the English Civil War, and he was executed in 1649 as the monarchy was abolished.
But, some comfort, we are told that even while imprisoned before his execution, Charles I was allowed to keep his copy of the First Folio. The copy contains his notes, in which he has written character names in the margins, perhaps to highlight his favorites — or maybe to keep the various comedy couples straight: “Is this the one with Beatrice and Benedick or the one with Helena and Bertram?”
There is something satisfying in learning that it was Shakespeare’s friends, two actors, who were the driving force in organizing whatever source material they could round up, collecting the plays and getting them published for posterity; after all, Shakespeare has been creating work for actors ever since.
(Side note: As a “Macbeth” fan, I also enjoyed learning that Shakespeare’s rough drafts are known as “foul papers” while the later, cleaned-up versions are called “fair copies.” “Fair is foul, and foul is fair…”)
In their effort to pay tribute to their deceased friend and preserve his legacy, John Heminges and Henry Condell also had to deal with some legalese that still exists in the modern arts world: Obtaining the rights to the works. The rights to many of Shakespeare’s plays were owned by those who had first printed them individually in various other formats, and the pair had to do some wheeling and dealing.
Lest you think the program has its eye solely on ancient history, it should be noted that the amusing stories of the First Folio are interspersed (sometimes smoothly, sometimes more clunkily) with the inspiring way Shakespeare impacts the world today, especially through the efforts of the Public Theater of New York City.
There’s “The Comedy of Errors” as a bilingual musical, Kenny Leon’s version of “Hamlet” for Shakespeare in the Park, a student production of “Romeo & Juliet” with children learning English as a second language. It’s all heartening to lovers of classical theater.
A favorite quote from the program comes from Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public, as he ponders why Shakespeare endures. When the playwright creates his tales, whether comic or tragic, Eustis says, “he sees the worth of every human being.”
How to watch
- On TV: 9-11 p.m. Nov. 17, on WUCF-TV, Channel 24
- Online streaming: At pbs.org/show/great-performances
Follow me at facebook.com/matthew.j.palm or email me at mpalm@orlandosentinel.com. Find more arts news and reviews at orlandosentinel.com/arts, and go to orlandosentinel.com/theater for theater news and reviews.
