What is the First Folio and how is it useful?
The First Folio is an ‘acting text’ of William Shakespeare’s plays, published in 1623 by Hemmings and Condell, two members of Shakespeare’s acting company, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men. It provides the closest version we have of the plays as Shakespeare wrote them and how they were acted. Shakespeare, himself an actor, coded the text in the First Folio (in a similar way in which a composer codes a music score). His unique use of punctuation, spellings, verse, poetic conceits (especially repetition) and other language choices, plus a combination of familiar story-lines and history, enabled the actors to know their given circumstances in a quick and concise manner so that they might make choices appropriate to the world of the play. Unfortunately, over the years, editors and scholars have altered what Shakespeare wrote in order to conform to more literary and modern grammatical rules and standards. In doing so, they have often changed these very important clues. And, as a result, many peop
