Why Do We Read Shakespeare's First Folio?

For this paper I have decided to review the National Shakespeare collection which is a series of 3 books that hold a facsimile of Shakespeare’s first folio. These are a series of large folio, hardback, around 295 pages each. The classic engraved portrait plate of Shakespeare, a coat of arms on title-page, a photogravure plate of Holy Trinity Church, Stratford upon Avon, a photogravure plate of Shakespeare’s Tomb in Stratford Church, plus several sepia plates by Sir J. Noel Paton are some of the images included. The volumes have facsimiles of the first folio texts included, The Tempest, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Measure for Measure, The Comedy of Errors, Much Ado About Nothing, Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, All’s Well That Ends Well, Twelfth Night, The Winter’s Tale, King John, Richard II, Henry IV Part 1 and 2, Henry V, Henry VI part 1-3, Richard III, Henry VIII, Romulus and Cressida, Coriolanus, Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Timon of Athens, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, and Cymbeline. Each folio contains a different genre including tragedies, comedies, and histories. The

Whitfield studies the purpose behind the images and makes claims about whether or not the artist was able to capture the psychology of the drama or whether the artist suited the images to their time and place. Whitfield also studies how these images related to the theatrical productions. Since one of the main differences between facsimiles and the original is the illustrations it is important we understand how the images of Shakespeare have developed and influenced our understanding of the plays, or be influenced by our understandings of the