THE BOOK OF WILLIAM, by Paul Collins. Bloomsbury; 288 pages; $25.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — To completely understand Shakespeare's "First Folio," it's crucial to realize that, more than anything else, it was an act of devotion.
A couple of years after the playwright died in 1616, John Heminge and Henry Condell walked into a London printing shop run by a man named William Jaggard. Heminge and Condell were Shakespeare's partners in the Globe Theater, and, as Paul Collins writes in his smashing new book, they also were the last men with an intimate knowledge of Shakespeare's plays.
"The two knew Shakesepeare as no one has ever known him since — not as an artistic icon, but as a friend and colleague. They'd walked the boards with the man himself, stared into his eyes as they spoke the lines that he had written for them."
At Jaggard's print shop, Heminge and Condell struck a deal. They would bring in a collection of manuscripts and prompt copies — more or less whatever they could scare up — and Jaggard would print a massive collection of Shakespeare's plays.
In some ways, it was a strange choice of printer, for Jaggard had bootlegged lyrics from "Love's Labour's Lost" while Shakespeare was still alive. On the other hand, by 1618, one John Shakespeare was finishing an apprenticeship at the printing shop. There's nothing like hiring a relative to smooth over old quarrels.
In many respects, it was an audacious project with slim precedent; Ben Jonson had published a folio of his collected plays the year Shakespeare died, but that was about it. Heminge and Condell were making a ringing declaration of confidence in the value of the writing contained in the "Folio," and they were backing up their belief with a fair amount of their money.
The book took awhile — books always do. "First Folio" wasn't published until 1623, seven long years after Shakespeare was laid to rest in Holy Trinity Church. It certainly wasn't a money-making scheme. About 750 copies were printed, priced at one pound apiece, and it took seven years to sell out the limited edition, mostly to aristocracy who could afford one pound for a book — a prestige item for the shelves.
For 150 years, it was just another used book, worth about what it had cost when new. It wasn't until the Shakespeare revival led by David Garrick that the book took off; in 1790, a copy went for 34 pounds, and the cost has been rising ever since.
"The Book of William" is, roughly, a book of literary history. It's the story of one book, "First Folio," from its publication down through the present day, when a copy will sell for millions, usually to some Japanese industrialist.
Along the way, Collins visits Christie's Auction House, the Folger Library — the home of 79 "First Folios," by far the greatest number in one place — and a man who has made it his life's work to compile a bibliography of each surviving copy.
It's a discursive book, casual but discerning, and typical of the author. Collins has written, among others, "Sixpence House," about the book town of Hay-on-Wye in England. As always, he is an enthusiastic and amusing writer — a good companion. He dips into the copy of the "First Folio" once owned by Samuel Johnson and notes the large number of what seem to be — and undoubtedly are — food stains on the pages.
"There are greasy fingerprints on 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' an unidentifiable smear across the second act of 'A Merchant of Venice,' and a crescent-shaped ring across the front of 'Measure for Measure' that is so clearly from a tea saucer that it should be a permanent exhibit in the Doctor Johnson Gallery of Bad Housekeeping."
Of the original press run of 750, 230 copies of the "Folio" are known to exist. Owners range from a Microsoft billionaire, the aforementioned industrialists and, oddly, a bucolic Irish college.
What Heminge and Condell did cannot be overestimated. Of the 36 plays in the "Folio," 18 never had been published before and would almost certainly have been lost had not the two men been so determined to memorialize their beloved friend. Without it, there would be no "Julius Caesar," no "Twelfth Night," no "Macbeth" or "The Tempest," no "Taming of the Shrew." In one swoop, Heminge and Condell preserved nearly half of the Shakespearean canon.
Collins is an adept and committed bibliophile, and in the course of his journey into the history of the "Folio's" individual copies, he comes to a not-so-startling realization; books outlive even the greatest of us.
Scott Eyman writes for The Palm Beach Post. E-mail: scott(underscore)eyman(at)pbpost.com.