Presented by Dr. David McInnis for Rare Books Melbourne and hosted at The Melbourne Athenaeum Library
On Tuesday 25th July, more than 70 people attended a fascinating talk that was held at The Melbourne Athenaeum Library to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the publication in 1623 of the First Folio of William Shakespeare’s plays. The talk was presented by Associate Professor David McInnis from the University of Melbourne, who spoke on “Printing the Plays of Shakespeare and Company in the 17th Century”. David started by discussing the First Folio of Ben Jonson’s plays, which predated Shakespeare’s First Folio by 7 years, and established the model for such a publication, while differing from the Shakespeare by being published with direct input from the “still-living” author. The link between Jonson and Shakespeare was further strengthened by David’s references to Jonson’s dedicatory verse to Shakespeare’s First Folio.
We were shown many examples of textual variations in different copies of the Shakespeare First Folio, of which about 230 of the 750 or so original copies survive today. It is our most important source for the 36 canonical plays of Shakespeare. David gave us an interesting account of some of the difficulties in interpreting 16th and 17th manuscripts and composing them into print. A lively question and answer session followed the talk, after which many members of the audience walked up to 156 Collins Street to view a copy of the Shakespeare Second Folio (1632) that was on display in Kay Craddock’s bookshop.
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