macbeth first folio edition william shakespeare

And so damage can happen.īLOCK: But don't even think about giving these books the white glove treatment. They used candles and candle wax strips on these books. HARRINGTON: Because it was read to death in a lot of cases. It sort of - it crackles as you open the paper.īLOCK: And he says that fresh condition is rare, especially for popular titles like Shakespeare's. POM HARRINGTON: It's this very fresh and sort of vibrant copy. The 'First Folio' is the priciest at $7.5 million. She's a Shakespeare scholar.ĬHANG: The bookseller Pom Harrington also tracked down a first edition of Shakespeare's poems, and he put the whole lot of five books up for sale at $10.5 million. SMITH: I'd never seen all those four 17th century books open in the same place at the same time.īLOCK: And that's saying something. To commemorate the book's anniversary, a rare books dealer in London has collected a copy of the First Folio, along with the second, third and fourth editions of the book. We wouldn't have 'Julius Caesar.' We wouldn't have 'The Tempest.' We wouldn't have 'Macbeth.' And we wouldn't have all the kind of cultural significance that they have got. Half of the plays would have just been lost. SMITH: If we didn't have this book, we wouldn't care about Shakespeare at all. She's talking about William Shakespeare's 'First Folio,' a near-complete collection of 36 of the Bard's plays published seven years after his death. Four hundred years ago, what may be the most significant book in the English language first appeared in print.ĮMMA SMITH: If we didn't have this book, you know, just - the implications of that are really substantial.ĬHANG: That's Emma Smith of the University of Oxford.

Macbeth first folio edition william shakespeare