Sotheby’s has announced that it is to auction a copy of the first folio of Shakespeare, which is expected to fetch £2.5-£3.5m. The 1623 first folio is probably the most important book in English literature, and this copy, which is in especially fine condition, is of particular interest because it contains early annotations.
The sale is significant because the annotations, probably dating from within 50 years of the book’s publication, have never been fully studied or published. They constitute some of the earliest evidence of which passages in the plays scrupulous readers of Shakespeare found themselves drawn to.
But the auction is also significant as the second sale within three years of a complete first folio by an institutional library, after the private sale of a copy to Paul Getty by Oriel College, Oxford in 2003. After more than a century of the most valuable books disappearing into institutions, it seems that we may be witnessing the beginning of a trend for some of them to re-emerge and find their way into private hands.
Containing all 36 of the recognised Shakespeare plays, the 1623 first folio is the first collection of his drama. Eighteen of the plays had never previously been printed and would presumably have been lost had it not been published. Some 750 copies were printed, of which about a third survive, though most are incomplete.
The Sotheby’s copy is being sold by Dr Williams’s Library in Gordon Square, London. It has been in the library since 1716, the longest period of continuous ownership of any copy in the world. It is bound in 17th-century plain brown calf, and lacks only a single original leaf, the dedication poem by Shakespeare’s friend Ben Jonson (though a copy of the page was added in the 19th century).
The early annotator read every play except The Merry Wives of Windsor in great detail, with pen in hand. Like a modern student, he underlined or scored the margin next to Shakespeare’s rhetorical flourishes (including “To be or not to be”), sometimes adding “wit,” “war” or “love” as reminders to himself. The annotations, including circles, dashes and trefoils, are typical of a 17th-century student who was perhaps compiling his own commonplace book of the best lines and speeches.
Surprisingly, the play most heavily annotated is Henry VIII, which is not entirely Shakespeare’s work. Manuscripts expert Peter Beal speculates that the more conventional writing style of Shakespeare’s collaborator John Fletcher might have been more acceptable to an early reader.
Thirty or 40 years ago, such annotations would have been regarded as defects, reducing the value of the book. Today, they are part of its attraction and probably increase its value, as interest in provenance grows among scholars and collectors.
Several other readers have also left their marks in the book, including one rather less reverent, who writes in exasperation: “But I desire the readers mought [mouth] to kis the wrigtheres arse.”
The sale of the folio will raise funds to secure the future of Dr Williams’s Library. Despite its enormous value, the first folio is not especially rare compared to some other 17th-century books, and copies have changed hands fairly regularly over the centuries. However, none in such fine condition as the Sotheby’s copy has sold at auction since 1980, when the Houghton copy was sold for £80,000 by Christie’s. A much poorer copy, the Abel Berland copy, was subsequently sold at Christie’s New York in 2001, for a hammer price of $5.6 million, making the current Sotheby’s estimate look conservative.
For more than a century, the traffic of books into institutional libraries has been regarded as a one-way street, and booksellers have complained that the most important items are no longer in circulation. Now, however, some libraries appear to be reassessing their holdings, in the light of ever-increasing online access to books.
The sale of two fine first folios by institutions may turn out to be two straws in the wind. It is possible that other great books will begin to emerge from libraries, as they decide that they no longer need to own books worth millions, when virtual copies are freely available. In many academic libraries, more people are working on screens than reading books. Many scholars say that the physical object is irreplaceable, but it is possible that cash-strapped libraries or universities may think otherwise.
This would be no different from Oxford University’s Bodleian Library, which sold its copy of the first folio in the 17th century after the more up-to-date and enlarged third folio was published in 1663. Two centuries later the Bodleian realised its mistake and bought back the very same copy for a then world record £3,000.
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