This just in: Another First Folio has been found in France
My, but that was a lot of alliteration in one title. But it is true: A library in Saint-Omer, near Calais, recently discovered that the old edition of Shakespeare's plays that they have, which is missing a few pages, including the title page, is, in fact, a First Folio.
For those of you bewildered by what that means, it's the earliest known edition of Shakespeare's plays, published after Shakespeare's death and edited by fellow actors of the Bard's. The publication of the First Folio led to the Second Folio (which had some differences), but the fact that the plays were collected and published at all is likely the reason we all know who Shakespeare is in the first place. The First Folio is not entirely a "holy grail" of books, since there were more than 800 published in the first place and more than 200 are still around and identified, but it's still a big deal, since it's the first evidence of Shakespeare's plays, which are considered among the greatest works of literature in the English language.
Here's a link to the BBC article on the new discovery.
And here's the closing couplet from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, which you can read in its entirety and learn more about in this post:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
For those of you bewildered by what that means, it's the earliest known edition of Shakespeare's plays, published after Shakespeare's death and edited by fellow actors of the Bard's. The publication of the First Folio led to the Second Folio (which had some differences), but the fact that the plays were collected and published at all is likely the reason we all know who Shakespeare is in the first place. The First Folio is not entirely a "holy grail" of books, since there were more than 800 published in the first place and more than 200 are still around and identified, but it's still a big deal, since it's the first evidence of Shakespeare's plays, which are considered among the greatest works of literature in the English language.
Here's a link to the BBC article on the new discovery.
And here's the closing couplet from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, which you can read in its entirety and learn more about in this post:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.